iusedtoberich said:
If you have played on this new Diamond rail design, does it play one hole like a GC now? I'm looking only for personal experiences, not what you heard from others. I'm also looking for player's experiences, not mechanics, which might be biased. Only talking about how the balls react off the rails, not the other factors like how the pockets play.
In order to have played on this rail design, it has to be about 6 months old or newer, OR, be an older table that was retrofitted by cutting the rails with a circular saw by one of only 5 or 6 people in the country.
Thank you for your feedback.
Hi IUTBR,
I have recently (last week) played on 3 older Diamond Pros (3 piece slate) with the newly refurbished black diamond k-55 rubber, in Phoenix, AZ. They were done by one of Diamond's Certified table mechanics.
My first impression is that they appear to play very close to modern day Gold crown specs in that the rubber definitely banks longer (arguably truer) that original Diamond rubber. The new rails are approx 15% slower than previous, ie not as "boingy".
Given that the cloth is brand new and still obviously sliding, it will be difficult to tell the true banking angles for a couple of weeks. Having said that, if you were a Gold Crown fan before (and not necessarily a Diamond fan) then I think most players will just love the new spec.
FWIW, when I first started playing on a Diamond a couple of years ago, I really did not care for the transition from GC's to Diamond but have since come to prefer the rail speed of the Diamond, most certainly for 1P and 14.1. I play approx 90% of my IP on a Diamond and have absolutely no desire to play IP on an older GC. It really is a completely different game, not much different to say playing Tennis on a clay court verses a grass court. I find the Diamond rail angles to be much more consistent, albeit playing "shorter". Hopefully it won't be too much of a transition to revert back to a "longer" rail.
The pool room in question has currently refurbished 5 or 6 of 7 total Diamonds and will soon be doing the same thing on the remaining 5 GC's that are seriously dilapidated.
I will be very eager to sample the "side by side" comparison of the completed Diamond verses GC to see with my own eyes that they will play identical, as promised by the table mechanic. Given the extreme high quality of the completed Diamonds I have little doubt that they will. I would anticipate that any discerning IP player, having sampled both tables that play the same will be pestering their local Poolroom owners to sign up for this "surgery" as soon as possible, especially if their room has a mixture of Diamonds and GC's. (If Jimmy Joe, owner of Kolby's Billiards/Tempe, AZ is reading this.......please don't shoot the messenger
)
If I understand correctly, all large tournaments that utilize Diamond tables will be incorporating the new Diamond spec rubber, starting with the recently finished US 9 ball open and the upcoming DCC.
As a side note, the pockets on all of these 12 diamonds/GC's will be cut identical to match the 4 1/2" current Diamond spec so playing IP on any these tables will be, in theory, exactly the same. If the newer GC's do infact match the playability of the new Diamonds, then I will certainly update my older home GC table to the new spec, (hopefully before GCC
.)
I will be sure to post an update when I have compared both the completed Diamonds and GC's.
Thanks.
Bernie.
