Why a Power Piston?

For those of you that understand the term “Power Piston” to mean a specific design in the Meucci line of cues, you already know what I am referring to. For those of you that do not know, a Power Piston refers to a combination of the Black Dot Bullseye shaft, but more importantly, a specific technology built into the butt section. The Power Piston butt is recognizable by the fact that the forearm (the area just below the joint and just above the wrap) is either going to be an ivory color or solid black. This area of the cue is a thin sleeve of high-impact plastic material over a maple dowel.

What this sleeve does for the player is to enhance the performance in two ways:

1) More power with less effort. This power being demonstrated by either more forward motion velocity, English velocity when using side, or a combination of the two.

2) The second thing that the power piston does for you the player is that it reduces the deflection of the cue ball (not to be confused with shaft deflection) even more than all other Meucci cues by 7-10%. This may not seem like a very large number to an amateur player, however, when you consider in the game of nine ball, one ball being 11% of the balls that need to be pocketed, it clarifies just how important that advantage can be.

What exactly happens when the cue ball is struck with a Black Dot Bullseye shaft with a Power Piston butt? Simply put, more compression of the pool cue at impact. The human arm, when swinging its arch to strike a ball, is only capable of a limited amount of speed and power. Therefore the cue design, in order to gain any advantage, must be balanced to that speed when the cue ball is struck. In other words, when the cue ball is struck, the cue then begins to compress (foreshorten) the overall length of the cue, loading the cue with additional power that will be added to the stroke that you’ve put on the ball when the loaded cue releases. All of this happens in a mere .140 inches (one hundred and forty thousands of an inch!). That .140 of the inch that I’ve referred to is the total distance that the cue ball travels from the first impact of the tip until the cue ball leaves the tip. So the job of the cue maker is obviously one that has to be measured precisely to achieve this amazing advantage, and he must also take into consideration the weight of the cue ball. This article has become fairly technical, and I hope that it is sufficiently understandable to those of you who care to know just what the advantage of having a Meucci Power Piston is.