Athena is Quarter King's line of value-priced pool cues built with women players in mind, sized for a shorter reach and a lighter, easier grip. We carry 62 Athena products across cues, hard cases, shafts and accessories, 28 of them in stock now, priced from about $10 for small accessories up to about $310 for a fully dressed cue. Every cue in the line shares the same core build, a 5/16x18 joint pin, a 13.00mm hard rock maple shaft, and a linen wrap, with the variety showing up in decorative forearm graphics rather than premium inlay work. Below is the full range, organized by cue, case, shaft and accessory.
Every item is brand new and 100% genuine, backed by its full manufacturer warranty. Free shipping on orders over $98 (contiguous US) and 30-day returns. Every spec on this page is checked against the manufacturer's published data by our Wilmington, NC store team.
4.9/5 average from 413 customer reviews across Athena.
Athena is not an independent cue-making company with its own factory and history. It is a house-branded pool cue line, positioned toward the budget end of Quarter King's cue wall, built around consistent, catalog-documented construction rather than a proprietary hitting technology. The line's defining spec is a shaft on the thinner side and a shorter overall length, marketed specifically for women players and sized for a smaller hand and a shorter bridge-to-shoulder reach than a standard 58 to 59 inch cue. Every Athena cue we carry also ships with a free 10 inch screw-in extension that threads into the base of the cue, giving extra reach on a long shot without needing a mechanical bridge.
Rather than compete on premium materials or inlay work, Athena tells its cues apart through decorative artwork on the forearm and butt sleeve, think stacked roses, shamrocks, butterflies, peacock feathers, leopard print and tribal designs, each paired with a coordinating linen wrap color. It is a cosmetic-first approach to variety: the underlying construction stays the same across the line, a 5/16x18 joint, a 13.00mm shaft, classic wood construction, and the SKU count comes from the number of graphic options rather than from different playing specs. Quarter King currently lists 62 Athena products in total, 28 of them in stock, spanning cues, cases, shafts and accessories, priced from about $10 up to about $310.
Athena does not market a named shaft or tip technology. What you are buying is a straightforward, traditionally built cue with a short list of consistent, catalog-documented parts. Here is what each one means for how the cue plays.
Across the Athena products we track by joint type, 42 use a 5/16x18 piloted joint and 1 uses the unpiloted version of the same pin. A piloted 5/16x18 joint has a small alignment pilot on the pin that seats the shaft square against the joint face before the threads engage, which keeps the hit and alignment consistent every time you screw the cue together. It is one of the two most common joint pins in the industry, so replacement shafts and joint protectors sized for 5/16x18 are widely available if you ever need one. The manufacturer's own spec sheet actually describes this same pin three slightly different ways across its 58 catalogued models, plain "5/16x18" on 36 of them and an explicitly "piloted 5/16x18" on the other 22, which reads like inconsistent labeling between listings rather than a real construction difference.
All 43 of the Athena products we track by shaft size use a 13.00mm shaft in hard rock maple, and on the large majority of models it is cut to a 10 to 12 inch pro taper, the same taper style most players already know from a standard maple shaft: a slimmer first foot of wood that flares gradually toward the joint. On top of the shaft sits a 1 inch fiber linen ferrule and, on most models, a 12.5mm, seven-layer vacuum-sealed tip described in the spec sheet as a boar skin tip. A small handful of models instead run a 13.5mm phenolic tip and ferrule combo, a harder, lower-deflection setup more associated with break cues than playing cues. The joint end is finished with a stainless steel collar, most often paired with a black composite ring and a thin silver ring set inside it.
42 of the Athena products we carry use a linen wrap, and this is where the line's real variety lives. The spec sheets describe more than a dozen distinct forearm and butt sleeve designs, from stacked roses and shamrocks to leopard print, peacock feathers, dragonflies and multi-color butterflies, each paired with a coordinating wrap color rather than plain black linen. Specific designs documented in the spec sheet include a green-stained forearm with shamrock accents, a gray-stained forearm with a tribal background and foiled butterflies, a birdseye maple forearm built around a peacock, a purple forearm with turquoise points and a tribal motif, and a leopard-print forearm finished with silver rings, each carried through to a matching butt sleeve. Our own color tagging across the Athena catalog shows white as the single most common finish, 21 products, followed by black at 19, brown at 10 and tan at 8, with smaller runs in blue, purple, silver, pink, multicolor, green, grey, red, yellow and orange.
Every Athena cue includes a free 10 inch screw-in extension that threads into the bumper end of the butt. It is a low-cost way to add reach for a long rail shot without carrying a mechanical bridge to the table, and it comes standard with the cue rather than as an upsell.
Athena is not just cues. Quarter King stocks Athena-branded gear across four categories: pool cues, hard cases, shafts and accessories. Here is how the shelf breaks down.
Our Athena Pool Cues category holds 24 cues, the core of the line, all built to the shorter, thinner-shaft design described above and finished in one of the line's decorative forearm and wrap designs. Flagship examples include the Athena ATH04, ATH08, ATH11, ATH13, ATH18, ATH23, ATH31 and ATH32.
Athena Cases holds 5 listings, all built as 2x2 hard cases carrying two butts and two shafts. Several add embroidery, for example the ATHC06 and ATHC08 Hard Embroidered Cases, while the ATHC01, ATHC02, ATHC03 and ATHC12 are plain hard cases. The ATHC02 lists at $148.50 and the ATHC12 at $197.10, which gives a sense of the spread across the case line.
Beyond cues and cases, we also carry a small number of Athena replacement shafts, matched to the same 13.00mm hard rock maple spec as the cues above, for a player who cracks a shaft or wants a spare. If you are shopping for a replacement or backup shaft rather than a full cue, Quarter King's general shafts category carries 13.00mm options that will thread onto an Athena butt, since they share the same joint. A handful of Athena accessories round out the shelf as well.
If you already play a cue with a common joint and shaft, here is how Athena lines up. 42 of the 43 Athena products we track by joint type use a 5/16x18 piloted joint, with 1 using the unpiloted version of the same 5/16x18 pin. All 43 use a 13.00mm shaft, all built in classic wood, hard rock maple, rather than carbon fiber, and 42 pair that shaft with a linen wrap. If you want to see every cue or shaft on the site that shares Athena's specs, our 5/16x18 joint, 13.00mm shaft size, classic wood shaft and linen wrap pages list them, or head to the shafts category if you just need a replacement.
Athena is built around one fit problem: a lighter, shorter cue for a smaller-handed or shorter-armed player, marketed toward women rather than as a general-purpose line. The shorter overall length and thinner-profile shaft are the two specs doing that work, not a shaft or tip technology claim. Because the cosmetic designs draw on florals, hearts, butterflies and animal prints rather than neutral finishes, it also suits a player who wants a cue that looks distinct from a plain black-and-chrome house cue. It is not marketed as a tournament or pro-level line, and nothing in the specs we carry points to it being one.
Athena cues carry a 1 year manufacturer's warranty against defects in materials and workmanship, consistent with the warranty terms listed against every model in our own specs. The manufacturer's spec sheet documents this as "Limited 1 year Manufacturer" on 48 of the 58 catalogued models, with the remaining 10 listed simply as "Limited" or "Limited-1 year", minor wording differences that all describe the same one-year coverage. We do not have published details on specific exclusions, for example warpage, wrap damage or tip wear, or on any registration step, so treat the 1 year term as the baseline and keep your receipt for any claim. Weight is adjustable on 55 of the 58 models in our spec sheets, and none of them include joint protectors or a case, so budget separately from our Athena Cases line if you want a matching case.
Community sentiment on the AZBilliards forums describes Athena as a solid, inexpensive cue that plays better than its price suggests and holds up fine for a player who is not yet chasing tournament-level equipment. That said, some of the same discussion describes the hit as light, and one poster suggested that a player planning to stick with the game long-term look at a step-up line instead once they outgrow an entry cue. Read as a whole, the sentiment lines up with how Athena is positioned: a comfortable, good-value starting cue rather than a long-term upgrade path.
Browse the full Athena shelf above, or step back to Quarter King's main pool cues, pool cue cases and shafts categories to compare Athena against every other brand we carry.
Athena builds value-priced cues positioned for women players, with a shorter overall length and a thinner-profile shaft than a standard cue, plus matching hard cases and a few replacement shafts.
No. Athena is a house-branded line rather than a standalone cue manufacturer with its own factory, built around consistent, catalog-documented construction across the whole lineup.
Athena cues carry a 1 year manufacturer's warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. We don't have published details on specific exclusions or a registration step beyond that term.
Every Athena cue in our catalog lists China as the country of origin in the manufacturer specs we track for each model.
Yes. Every Athena cue we carry includes a free 10 inch screw-in extension that threads into the butt for extra reach without a mechanical bridge.
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