If you play primarily steel tip, you may notice that a soft tip dart in the same barrel design feels different. This is because the nose of the dart is drilled out to accept a 2ba soft tip and the dart will feel light in the nose.

One of the design benefits of the Acute tip, is that more weight is retained in the nose of the soft tip barrel. This makes the Acute barrel feel and throw more like a steel tip dart.

Several Japanese barrel manufacturers offer Acute tip style barrels (i.e. Monster Barrels Design, DMC, etc.)

The US players may have trouble purchasing the Japanese Acute barrel styles as there is potential for legal conflict in the US between the Japanese Acute barrels and the designer of the M3 barrels. In order to avoid possible litigation, US dart shops sometimes decline to sell the Japanese Acute barrels.

My sponsor has sent me a few sets of Acute style barrels to try. I definitely like the nose weight of an Acute barrel over the lack of nose weight in a 2ba barrel. Although I like the Acute barrels, I throw with 2ba barrels to promote what can be purchased in the US.

+1 from me, an interesting read.

Sounds good and a good design point. Pity they are so expensive though.

For those who own 2ba soft tip darts but want to try an Acute tip there is a solution. Scroll down to the middle of the page and look at the 4ba converters:

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These add less than 1gm to your dart and you can use the Acute tip. Although you would be using an Acute tip and adding some weight to the nose of your barrel, it is not quite the same as a true Acute tip barrel.

Thanks for the post!!! very informative.

I think the Acute is a great design idea.

The dart will certainly have a different feel as the weight will be retained at the front of the dart.

Been toying with the idea of a custom set of darts with this design as I prefer a front loaded dart.

I had been looking to pick up a set of Acute style barrels to test out these tips. I have been playing Soft tip for quite a few years and testing/reviewing is a passion of mine.

One advantage I would look forward to is the ease of replacing a broken tip. On a new commercial board common at US tournments/league (Arachnid or Shelti) both are hard on the popular L-Stye lippoints. I have a Galaxy 2 for a home board and when the board was new I would snap off the tips inside the barrels - this happened to my partner at the last Bullshooters I attended as well. When your at a contest, digging out the remains of the tip deep in the barrel can disrupt any flow you may have in a match.

The only downside to the acute tips, is the bad press they get on the new Dartslive boards. I have had the oppurtunity to buy several sets of dart for this reason. I usually am a (see for myself kind of guy) so I was ready to pull the trigger on some used DMC Lim's untill I pay'ed attention to how many bounce-out Lim was having in his "The World's" matches. Some of these bounce outs were (not scoring) in soft tip - this can be a match end'er.

My guess L-Style will get this corrected and I will kick myself for not getting a set of Acute barrels when they are selling at such a good price.

i use M3 acute and have no problem with bounce outs on dartslive machine.

Why is there not a company closer to home making these tips and points....flights and shafts.....thought everything the came from japan/china was cheap!!! Everything is made there....lol

crash336 wrote:

I had been looking to pick up a set of Acute style barrels to test out these tips. I have been playing Soft tip for quite a few years and testing/reviewing is a passion of mine.

One advantage I would look forward to is the ease of replacing a broken tip. On a new commercial board common at US tournments/league (Arachnid or Shelti) both are hard on the popular L-Stye lippoints. I have a Galaxy 2 for a home board and when the board was new I would snap off the tips inside the barrels - this happened to my partner at the last Bullshooters I attended as well. When your at a contest, digging out the remains of the tip deep in the barrel can disrupt any flow you may have in a match.

The only downside to the acute tips, is the bad press they get on the new Dartslive boards. I have had the oppurtunity to buy several sets of dart for this reason. I usually am a (see for myself kind of guy) so I was ready to pull the trigger on some used DMC Lim's untill I pay'ed attention to how many bounce-out Lim was having in his "The World's" matches. Some of these bounce outs were (not scoring) in soft tip - this can be a match end'er.

My guess L-Style will get this corrected and I will kick myself for not getting a set of Acute barrels when they are selling at such a good price.

Interesting. I have never snapped a tip off at the threads (i.e. inside my barrel).

I'm not so certain about the basis for the bad press that Acute tips get on Dartslive boards. I think that what you saw was more bad luck, than an Acute tip issue. Paul's multiple wins, plus his world championship win, would have been very difficult if there was an Acute tip issue.

The Acute tip is a fantastic tip. When compared to other competing brands of Acute style tips, the L-Style Acute tip outlasts the other Acute style tips by a mile.


Check your PMs.

Time to eat some crow, with a resent change in employment status, lets just say I have a lot more time to do testing. I got a hold of some Acute tip darts and there 2BA counterparts. This made for a really fair comparisons. I used Lippoints tips on the 2BA barrels and Lstyle Accute tips on the Accute barrels. I mixed the barrels (2BA and 1 Acute) per set , matched barrels and stems... I would record any comments after I would throw, then when I retrieved the darts would I know what type of tip was on the dart.

Just a little about the 2BA Lippoints, I have been testing Soft Tip tips for several years, my work is still up on other forums - there maybe 2 or 3 other brands you see at major events (Bullshooters, NRA ...) but the Lippoints have been the best since they have come out.

TILL NOW, the acute tip won in my testing! I threw these test sets in my A2 practice each night for an hour for the last week, since I simply was not having issues I added extra doubles - this is where the fun began. I struggle wiht doubles so I started wiring almost every pass.

My findings, both dart tips stick like glue and seldom bounce out, when new you can tell no difference. Why I judge the Acute darts (slightly better) is they bend less, the tip is a tiny bit shorter and the treads extend out (my opinion) in to the tip - making the tip firmer.
the Acute darts would even stick on the outer catch area on my Arachnid G2. Bottom line, although I am happy with the wear on both tips, the Acute simply last longer (really on difference I could find between them).

I hope to publish some pictures I snapped once I find a hosting site (sorry doing lots of job interviews so any extra time I get I spend at the board).

The difference between tips is so close you cannot go wrong either way, however if given the options on the same barrel, I would order them Acute (or Sleek - Monsters name for them on the barrels I tested with).

^^ agree with everything in this above post

Great review Crash. Take a +1.

Nice write up. Try measuring the longevity of the Acute tip vs. another brand's tip. That would be interesting too.

I use Picasa and Photobucket for hosting pictures. Picasa works with a free app that you download from Google. This app is very good for managing your photo albums, syncing with the web, and photo touch ups. Photobucket has no app, it is just a hosting site.

Tomorrow is a big day, darts at the Superbowl party, I just loaded up some Cosmo and Tiga tips on some of the contenders. With a large bottle of Knob Creek, 2 jars of shine already on the wet bar, tips tomorrow will be tested for durability I can assure you.

All sounds good to me, but its annoying not been able to try these things out over here.

I feel loyal to the steel tip game but when I hear you guys talking so much about these machines and all the other soft tip merchandise it makes me eager to try them out.