I can hardly believe that I am about to say this.
I’m going to review a tip and I have nothing bad to say about it! In an attempt to find a suitable replacement for the old Moori tips that I used exclusively for quite some time until they became inconsistent and unreliable, I have conducted tip trials — as I call them — with the hope that I would find the tip I am going to rave about in this review.
Will Fuji tips end up on the 20 or so shafts that I have for my 12 cues? No, that won’t happen again for several reasons.
I don’t want to go through the same disappointment that the downfall of Moori tips caused me.
I don’t want to experience that somewhat lost feeling I got when I realized that some of my favorite shafts needed the Moori that was on them replaced and I had no clue what I wanted to replace them with.
I fortunately have found that there are more than a few good tips on the market that I like well enough to use without my overall game suffering.
I will tell you that I like Fuji the best so far and I like it so much that I was tempted to actually end my tip trials and declare Fuji the winner. I won’t do that just yet, though, as there are a few more tips that I want to give a chance to dethrone the new champ and if they prove worthy, I will review them also.
Now for the actual review.
The Fuji tip is manufactured exclusively in Italy by Longoni. It is a high quality tip made with 12 layers of pigskin leather. They are not ridiculously expensive at just under $16.00 per tip from Ozone Billiards and less if you buy them in larger quantities. There are three reasons why I have nothing bad to say about the Fuji tip other than the decent price.
The Fuji tip did not fight me like some of the other tips that will be near the top of my favorite tip list which I will comprise once my tip trials are concluded.
I like to give all relevant information when I do a review, so I will include some names here. The G-2 and the Sniper will both be near the top of my list of favorites, but they both fought me during the shaping process like a child on his first day of school. The Fuji cut down easily and after it was shaped and I began shooting with it, I only had to reshape it and burnish it a few times, maybe four, over my 50+ rack trial period. Compared to the battle put up by the Sniper and the G-2, the Fuji was a dream come true.
The Fuji tip held chalk extremely well and I am talking about my chalk preferences, which include Master and Blue Diamond.
Nothing fancy, expensive or pasty and nothing that turns my hands, cue ball and cloth blue after a dozen racks.
As well as holding its shape and chalk well, the Fuji soft tip, which is the hardness level I tested, felt like a slightly soft medium tip and not a mushy or spongy soft tip which I can’t stand.
It measures out at 74.2 on the PoolDawg Ultimate Pool Cue Tip Guide which is about two points higher than a soft Black Kamui (72.3) and just a bit softer than the soft G-2 (74.8) which actually felt like a medium tip to me. Just for reference, the Moori soft was 72.8 and the Moori medium was 75.5 on the same scale.
The Fuji tip complimented the way I play which to some might seem a bit conservative. I like to hit center ball whenever possible and use stop shots and force follow shots to control the cue ball and set myself up for my next shot most of the time. However, I don’t avoid using extreme English when needed and I have no trouble drawing the ball if necessary. Fortunately, the Fuji didn’t let me down regardless of the type of stroke or shot I had to use to get the shape I wanted for my following shot. All in all, the Fuji performed exactly like you would expect a product from a highly respected company like Longoni to perform.
So far, it is at the top of my favorite tips list and rightfully so.
William Hurst was born in Philadelphia and grew up in a small suburb southwest of the city until the age of fifteen. For the last thirty-five years he has lived in Florida, and currently resides in a small town called Crawfordville located in the big bend area of Florida’s panhandle. He is married and has a teenage daughter who used to play pool, but—unfortunately for him—gave it up. He is a simple man with a passion for this wonderful sport and enjoys sharing that passion with like-minded people.
Photo: Steve Maw/Flickr Editor: Dana Gornall