Lépine
1297
I learned a lot so when I saw one of these
In person, I could fully appreciate how it was made and how far a head of its time the construction was.
The owner let me take one or two shots with it. The feel of the cue is different from what I was expecting. Three experts who know exactly what a Balabushka should feel like confirmed this is the typical feel of the best of the Balabushka examples. Obviously no amount of descriptions can truly convey an experience to someone else. We can only create an intricate mosaic of common impressions and hope the reader can vicariously experience what we have experienced. So here it goes...
The cue has a heavy impact for its mass, but it doesn't feel anything like a bat making contact with a baseball. It's not light and smooth like a driver properly hitting a golf ball. It's not hard like hitting a nail with a hammer. It is a little bit like hitting a walnut with a rubber mallet or maybe a door swing into a rubber door stop. All the weight of the impact is there and you can feel it, but there is only half of the ping sensation of modern high end cues. Some mass produced cues, especially McDermott Defy carbon shafts have almost no feel. You can't really tell how hard you hit the cueball. The Balabushka tells you exactly how hard you hit the ball AND how much english transferred to the cue, but you really don't hear it like a TAD. I swapped the 60 year old shaft with a 10 year old well seasoned Tascarella shaft and to my surprise, the cue almost felt the same. The shaft back on the Tascarella butt felt like a typical Tascarella, hard, bright, lively, and a ping not very different from a TAD. So the secret is in the Balabushka butt. If Pete Sr is trying to make his cues feel like a George Balabushka, I would say his cues are slightly different, maybe better? I guess if it was a rifle, you could say it is slightly recoil less, but you still feel the power of the discharge.
One of these two is worth a small fortune
This is something fun for the weekend. Try to figure out which of these two cues is worth between 20 and 30 thousand US dollars. After a few weeks of intense research, I can finally tell the difference. Hope you enjoy having something to challenge that wa...
My gut, which isn't into research, says Cue B.
The "cross" and "dots" on Cue B in the first picture appear to be real mother of pearl and the grip to be a hand-wound cord. The "spear" graphic on Cue B in the second picture appears to be an inlay, while on Cue A it appears to be printed. I'm going to g...
Sound advice! 🤣
And thank you for the challenge. It's been both interesting and educational!
Clearly no expertise on my part. Now, after looking at Tascarellas...
and other cues, I realize the naiveté of my guess.
Great I hope you enjoy this little contest.
I see some excellent detective work. You can be experts in any field. It won't be fun if I don't give everyone enough time to try so no hints to spoil the fun 😎And you'll have to wait for the explanation Monday.
Actually on closer inspection it’s B
Always go with the patina if you are looking for something older
B. Something about the lower two MOP
dots in picture 2 and how they slightly touch the edge of the inlay.
Cue A is modern and Cue B is a Bushka
Cue B is worth more than cue A by alot. The pocket for the inlay on cue B is one hole, the diamond is put in then filled with epoxy. The worn brown bumper is also a bit of a giveaway regarding George.
Neither are my custom order, that one
it estimated to be two years from now delivery and I think Jr is going to build it. It will be off the charts in design. Not my original design but a modified version of something Sr may have made. My cue is unmistakably Tascarella and not a Balabushka re...
For sure cue A !! 🤘😎
Honestly, no c(l)ue - at least I got a decent pun into the mix 😄👍
It’s like the difference between a Phillips and a Flat Blade screwdriver
Phillips you can use right or left handed, turning either direction; flat blade only works in one direction Notice that Snap-On provides screwdrivers for short, medium and tall people. I have some of the Regular ones they gifted me years ago ...
The curve ball pitch🤣🤣🤣
You are all making one serious mistake. You assume the correct cue has not been refinished. Art who is likely on the sidelines watching knows I went through this problem myself. Now I know the possibility of a refinish can screw up determination of the au...
I am glad you are looking beyond
just the freshness of the current state of the cues.
I was out all day yesterday . . .
. . . and while I was checking in occasionally on my phone, this is the first opportunity I've had to weigh in on my iMac. B .
Fun fact...
So to tell if there is ivory present... I use a UV 364nm black light. Can you tell which is ivory ? One pair is ivory, the other is Elforyn. It looks so good including the lines (schreger lines) you see in ivory that experts get fooled. But guess what... ...
There's a ringer in the group
I won't say who, but there's someone who can tell the difference and probably bet $20k he's right.
No one else 😀
Last day to show how well you can use your watch hunter skill in a totally different field
Beware the Red Fox... Did I say anywhere
that there is a Balabushka shown here? True fact, both cues are made with the same original parts. The blanks were made by the same person most likely within a couple of years of each other. That blank supplier is most likely long since pasted on. The per...
One of these is genuine the other a hommage
Both use same blanks. One cue is priceless as in it could be worth even more than the typical range of our big fancy cue. ...
Have you figured it out?
.... Well, I thought we would get more participation, but we did quite well. It was all intended to be just great fun and I hope it was fun. This is a really challenging predicament if you had to choose between these two cues. Cues and especially very hig...
The cross was the necessary . . .
. . . and sufficient clue. I've no expertise about vintage cue-making - what little knowledge I have has been accrued casually over the last decade. Thanks very much for sharing this expedition into the world of legendary cues, Seiji. I know a guy who own...
The TAD I played a few racks with had a plush, cushiony hit . . .
. . . and was unrestored. This was nine or ten years ago, but the smooth hit was unforgettable.
I still think there's something wrong
with that TAD. Smooth soft hit is not what a TAD should feel like. It should feel like a refine break cue. Hard and crisp. You took a couple of hits with mine. It should feel like the tip is made of wood
Well, maybe a meeting with the owner . . .
. . . can be arranged. Then we'll know for sure. 😉
I have 6 TAD shafts and two more on the way
I'm pretty confident that with 8 TAD shafts (6 made by TADAO Kohara) that the shafts should hit like steel.
You can hear how hard this TAD hits. It echos in the pool hall.
The sound is louder when the TAD hits the cue ball than when the object ball hits the pocket !
TAD is one of the hardest hitting cues out there.
Most experienced pool players will say that the hardest hitting cues are Balabushka Szamboti TAD Tascarella Humm note any patterns forums.azbilliards.com forums.azbilliards.com 771/ The last comment I think is Eddie Cohen the winner of several recent cue ...
My sense of the Tad's hit is probably relative . . .
. . . to the Denali cues I was using then with mainly oak and purpleheart shafts. Here's my main player at the time, a solid rosewood forearm handle with purpleheart and oak shafts, compressed Triangle medium tips, Micarta ferrules, and elk antler joints,...
George invented the Buzz Ring for the A joint.
Oh and for extra nerd points... Below is the details of many ways a forearm blank is mated to a cue handle portion of the butt. Eventually glues can fail, especially in the 1960s glues. The Buzz Ring was invented to transmit impact force, but prevent the ...
The other interesting tidbit from your post . . .
. . . is the tip diameter of the shafts - all three are 13 mm. That may have been standard back then - I truly don't know - but lately I've been working out with a cue originally specified for breaking that has a 13+ mm tip laminated Dufferin maple shaft ...
When I ordered my Blue Tascarella. I asked for
Balabushka dimensions. So the cue will be 57 inches and not 58-60 like modern cues. It will be thick butt, and butt heavy balance point. The shaft I was asked if want 14mm... I said no 13.5mm since I can't bend a shaft that stiff 🥴. Pete has the secret re...
Pete asked if you wanted a 14 mm tip? . . .
. . . maybe that's what George preferred. My sense has been narrower tips allow greater amounts of spin (English, draw, follow) to be applied to the cue ball. A more spherical profile and softer leather add to the mix; making unnatural angle bank shots is...
Theresa asked me what size shaft
Hard to tell what was originally the standard. Over the many decades, I am sure most shafts are thinner than George made them. Most likely the taper has eroded too. It's impossible to remake the original feel if the cue has lost the shafts or if it was pl...
I collected about 10 authentication
reports done by the Tascarella family. 10 out of 1200 is insufficient data to represent statistically accurate correlation to represent the actual population distribution. However, I found the most frequent size was 12.50 mm and 13.00 mm.
In other words, basically nothing has changed . . .
. . . over the last seven decades. It could be said there's a world of difference between 12.5 mm and 13.0 mm tips; for a sensitive player, that's certainly correct. For an inexperienced player . . . not so much.
Right X-Ray is Balabushka
Don't know what the left one is (from what I have read it shows what I think is a normal Balabushka construction), but the right is Leo St. James Balabushka. ...
What I found fascinating in the x-ray is the length of the pin . . .
. . . which looks to be 6". Denali pins, by way of comparison, are 2". I described the x-ray to Bob, and his take is that Balabushka employed a long pin to impart forward balance to the cue. Denali cues never employ weight bolts; balance is achieved by ch...
A long steel pin should add weight, moving the balance point forward. Maybe . . .
. . . the maple in his cues was relatively light, or perhaps he felt that a long pin would reinforce the hit. Southwest employs a (afaik) unique 3/8 - 11 pin thread; my sense is that they use the unusual thread so that their shafts or butts can't be used ...
The other logical explanation which just occurred to me . . .
. . . is that there was a weight bolt that was removed after the cue was made. There's a ~ 6" void drilled at the bottom of the handle that's evident in the x-ray; maybe an owner didn't care for the balance point built into the cue and removed the weight ...
Void looks like the McDermott Variable Weight System :)
Yes, really unexpected to see such a long empty space that goes half way up into the wrap area. I have no idea why it's that deep into the cue. Maybe St. James wanted a 17 ounce cue? With those materials, the average weight of the cues I have seen are 19 ...
The drilled hole is deep . . .
. . . probably to accommodate various length weight bolts. That there isn't a weight bolt evident in the x-ray might indicate a preference for a forward balance point by a previous owner.
The cue as x-rayed might not have a pleasing resonance . . .
. . . but the balance should be forward. Maybe that was the preference of a prior owner. There's always a trade-off. Ivory ferrules have been proven to be the worst performers in tests, but nothing plays like ivory.
Adaptability
I think my cues are only similar in balance points if they are the same cue maker. Doesn't seem to bother me as long as the balance point isn't too far from 19 inches to 17 inches. I think my current player is at 18 inches on a 57 inch. My previous main p...
We were missing the point of the Xrays
Like all things we don't really understand. We make wrong assumptions if we never understand the original purpose. I can't reveal the true purpose of the X rays as this would aid counterfeiters into understanding how to make better fakes. X rays are done ...
Pure White is incorrect for genuine Balabushka.
One other difference between Cue A "Klein" and Cue B genuine Balabushka. The butt cap for most of the 1960s models is described as "Milk White Delrin". Cue A butt cap is pure white, which is not normal for genuine Balabushka. ...
I learned a lot so when I saw one of these
In person, I could fully appreciate how it was made and how far a head of its time the construction was. The owner let me take one or two shots with it. The feel of the cue is different from what I was expecting. Three experts who know exactly what a Bala...
It's interesting to see what all original cues with the box are worth.
This seems to be the equivalent of finding a vintage Submariner or other with the original 1950s full set. This cue is only missing the receipt. Nice cue. ...
Pool fans everywhere should be grateful cues of such historical . . .
. . . value are ending up in your collection, where they'll be cared for as they deserve. 🎱
Thank you Art, this is quite kind of you
I am happy to see someone like you appreciates my interests in historical themes even if a bit outside of the mainstream. I think even a pool cue can have a bit of history that makes it special. Although I have only admitted to owning the TAD ...
I was confirming my impressions of the performance of a George Balabushka
I think for anyone that has played pool long enough, there is the mystery of what the Holy Grail feels and plays like. With a cost of at minimum $15,000 for the Burton Spain blanks and Gus Szamboti blanks and more of an average price of $25,000 for a fanc...
My thoughts about cue-making . . .
. . . are partly validated by AI. Stainless pins are my favorite over brass or G-10 . . . the difference in feedback is noticeable. And aged old-growth maple is superior to freshly harvested blanks . . . that's also a noticeable difference. When it comes ...
Where did you get Old Growth? I haven't seen
real old growth since before the millennium. I believe old growth is now all in protected forests so haven't been available for long time. Unless you are getting them from used pianos or gym floors
Bob has scores of Duferin laminated maple blanks acquired . . .
. . . thirty years ago that were at least ten years old when he bought them. I've two players with shafts made from those blanks, one with a Kamui SS and the other with an Elkmaster. This is the laminated maple shaft with an Elkmaster tip and juma joint. ...
I'll ask . . .
. . . but doubtful. Bob has told me a few times he doesn't make shafts for other maker's cues, only his own.
I was thinking of a Balabushka
shaft substitute. No one will sell an original authenticated Balabushka shaft. I think I prefer Whyte Carbon more than Denali for my Gus Szamboti player
I got a Whyte Carbon Raw
11.75mm for my Gus Szamboti that Jim Odom finished. Now that cue butt normally plays like TAD and George consulted with each other and the results was Opus One. But the Whyte Carbon even if Ferdor Gorst is God with that FG57, it just doesn't feel right. I...
I've played with cf a few times . . .
. . . but couldn't come around to the feedback, or more precisely, lack thereof. The 'feel' of wood helps make practice pay off. Try dialing in a four-rail bank shot . . . . . . without feedback. Art
I don't know how much feed back in needed for a bank shot, but cue ball distance control
is of course another story. One of the big controversy going on right now is over the World Pool Championship. "Waxgate" has a lot of professionals upset at what was going on with the billiard balls used. The balls were not behaving the way the balls shou...
And if you don't think cheating happens in local money games...
I had a guy who ordered french fries and the guy was a clear cheater. He would stare down at me from the pocket I was aiming at and keep moving around the table as I pocketed balls. Then, he greased the cueball with french fries. As soon as he did it, I f...
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