Your pool game heavily depends on the quality of your pool cue tip. If you don’t choose the right tip, then you are likely to pay in the form of less accuracy. Finding the right cue tip for yourself can be difficult.
There are different types of cue tips available, and which type of you may buy depends on your preferences and level of your expertise.
In this article, I’ll discuss different types of pool cues. After learning about each type, you’d be able to decide which type of cue tip is best for you.
There are three types of pool cue tips: Soft, Hard and Medium-hard.
The theory behind soft tips is they compress during the impact with the cue ball and stay on the ball for an extra bit of time that is important to have when you are up against a competitive player.
Advantages of Soft Cue Tips
Disadvantage of Soft Cue Tips
It’s like a trade-off, you have to give more time to your cue tip to achieve great control and spin on the ball.
Expert’s Choice
No matter, whatever your choice is, but have a look at our expert’s choice. They have chosen some of the best soft cue tips to simplify your quest for the best pool cue tip.
KAMUI Clear Black Laminated Pool Billiard CUE TIP is our experts’ choice, for its durability and performance.
Pros of KAMUI Cue Tip
Now comes the hard tip category.
Advantage of Hard Cue Tips
Disadvantage of Hard Cue Tips
You’ll see many professional players playing with hard tips but they have mastered the art after years of practice until they get used to the precision.
Before switching to the hard tip, you need confidence that you can only get by taking more hits with the soft tip.
Pro Tip: If you are a beginner, play with soft tips as they give more control and the more you hit the more your confidence increases.
Medium hard tips are pretty good performance wise. These are the tips which the majority of pool players play with. Also, the majority of jump break cues feature medium-hard tips.
Advantages of Medium-Hard Cue Tip
The most common problem that occurs in ordinary tips is they mushroom quickly, but not in medium-hard ones.
Disadvantage of Medium-Hard Cue Tip
Pro Tip: If you are an amateur, then medium-hard tips can be a good option for you. They’ll help you to develop your game until you are ready to switch to a hard or soft one, whatever you want.
The basic types of pool cue tips have been discussed above, but there are a few more.
Basically the rest of the tips are driven from the basic types we have discussed above. But they take the specific characteristic of a tip to an extreme level – like:
When you have different needs and preferences, these unorthodox materials come to your aid.
Recommended Cue Tips According to Preferences
All in all, these are the tip material driven from the basic ones.
To make it easy for you to comprehend things, here are some quick facts regarding the different types of tips.
Though cue tips are a tiny object, which in many instances would go unnoticeable but they hold cardinal importance if one wants to uplift his pool/snooker skills.
The durability of a cue tip depends on the quality of material used in it, and since they are going to play a massive role in the entire billiards game, they need to be strong.
Leather is the most common material used in the production of cue tips. Or, pig skin as well.
Leather has been used in tips for decades, but in the last couple of years, we have seen non-organic hard plastic tips like phenolic also catching up.
Even leather has different types, and based on these types, hard soft and medium tips are manufactured.
Tips with solid leather consists of a single piece of leather piece (cow,pig or elm). It is an inexpensive material and relatively harder but it can be difficult to maintain.
If you are a pro, you won’t like to play with such tips made of this because they generally misshape or mushroom and constant shaping and grooming is required in order to get them going.
These are the tips made of multiple layers of leather – each layer is sandwiched together.
In general, it is considered the most common and popular cue material that has been used for ages and is still doing pretty well till this day.
The reason for its common use is that it gives a more consistent gameplay experience, holds the chalk well and is medium-hard (medium hard tips are easy to maintain).
Once again, it depends on the quality of material it is made of and how well you have protected it.
Moreover, your style of play also matters.
In general, the odds are your tip will dry out in some 6-8 months or so – talking about pig skin or cow skin tip.
Phenolic tips are considered long-lasting than skin tips, they can survive one complete year.
Another important thing to note down regarding the lifespan of a cue tip is soft tips wear out quickly, and hard tips survive longer and hold their shape for a good number of games.
Finding a decent cue tip can be tricky, especially when one is on a tight budget. But when you know all about different types of cue tips available and their material, including their type of use, one can make the right choice that is going to help him improve his pool skills.
Moreover, by choosing the right cue tip, you can also ensure that your chosen tips are durable and going to last longer, because replacing a cue tip can take a significant amount of time and effort.
