Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Pros: If you like black light, this is the only game in town I know of, and it can be made to work.
Cons:
1. The 8-ball. If it was black it would be invisible, so it's white with a black circle around a white number Eight. Check out the picture and you'll see. An unavoidable issue but it doesn't significantly interfere with play, though sizing up the table it's easy to mistake the 8-ball for the cue ball.
2. Other balls fairly dark. I searched Google shopping for Glow in the Dark billiard balls and found a set on E-Bay for under fifty dollars. Definitely inferior quality, but more glow! Their cue ball glows a dull yellow, whereas under a black light the Aramith Neon cue ball is pretty much just a different shade of white compared to the cue ball that came with my table. I ended up keeping most of Aramith's 1 through 9, but the white parts of the E-Bay balls have more chemical treatment to them, so I swapped out the cue ball and stripes 10 through 15. Even the E-Bay Orange 5-ball was far brighter than the Aramith, and normally ALL orange colors tend to glow under black light. So, prepare to be underwhelmed at the black-light effect of the balls included with this set.
2. Attachment hardware for the green tubing doesn't work for the pockets. Specifically, the tubing over the pockets will quickly come loose from your cue rubbing against the tubing on ordinary shots over the pockets. It might stay in place for a game, maybe two, but will be a constant nuisance if installed per the instructions. And worse, the attachment hardware for the pockets is tiny spikes meant to stick out of the tubing that you stick into your felt, so using this setup as designed at the least you'll make multiple pinpricks in your felt, and inevitably rip your felt.
That said, after significant installation modifications I'm very happy with the results, though depending on how expensive a table you own, and how into black light you are, you may not be interested in putting in the time and effort.
Included with the set:
Tubing, enough to outfit a nine foot table. Great responsiveness to black light, and with my table enough left over to highlight parts of the rails on the 'flip' air hockey side of my table.
Springs to attach the tubing (more later), and you get one extra of each of the two types of spring.
Black-light responsive balls. The dark blue and dark red solid balls don't glow very much compared to the neon green, and the 8-ball by necessity is white with a black circle around the eight.
Neon green round stickers for the sights along your rails. I've had to re-glue these more than once.
What look like very small rubber bands, but extra wide, responsive to black light, to put on your cue to aid in aiming your shots. I needed to be careful to put them in just the right spot to avoid interfering with shots, and was using fluorescent stickers for black light air hockey and darts anyway so I used stickers instead and am glad I went with that. BTW I plan to replace their sight stickers with another color instead of their green stickers-on-green tubing effect.
Installation:
With the Springs, you push one end into the tubing, and the other end has a hook that you snag into the inside of a pocket and then run the tubing along the railing where it won't interfere with play. The instructions say to staple the springs in place, but I don't see how anything but a staple gun (which I don't have) would work for this purpose, and this step hasn't been necessary even rotating my table between billiards and air hockey.
The big flaw with this system is with the tubing over the pockets. It needs to be installed around the outside edges on top of the pockets. Instead of hooks on the other end of the spring there are 'points' that you're supposed to jab into the felt. First, what if you had a really nice table, would you really want to be intentionally damaging your felt like that? Second, making a shot from behind/above a pocket with tubing installed will dislodge the tubing. I'd say this issue is why the instructions are telling you to staple the tubing in place. With my table I took 3M double-sided adhesive tape and applied it directly to my rails, then glued the tubing on with Super Glue gel. Regardless, be prepared to permanently damage your pool table to get this setup to work.
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Aramith Neon Billiards Ball Set
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