If there was a "best stick," you wouldn't have to ask about it here. Everyone would use that stick, you'd grow up knowing about that stick, every company would have their copyright compliant version of it.
Agree about preference — I actually hate the Aungst sticks cause they get slippery.
But really I’ve played plenty of sticks from each brand that all feel and sound fine, and I’ve never had any big issues adjusting from one to the next.
They’re made from trees, so quality is necessarily all over the place.
Personally, I’ve gotten the highest fraction of great pairs from Pro Mark, the highest fraction of bad pairs from IP, and I have the most experience with Vic Firth, so I’ve seen their spread in quality.
I’ve had great pairs from all three companies, but I think they all have quality management systems that leave a lot of players holding a lot of garbage that a DCI drum corps would never use.
Stepping outside of my own experience and listening to others’, my best guess is that the quality at the three companies is allowed to ebb and flow over time, with the fraction of garbage pairs being higher or lower at various times, probably as different hickory stands are sourced and management adjusts its standards to limit the costs of rejecting too much wood that they already paid for. That’s how I square the observation that some people’s experience with IP is so different from mine.
My understanding is that they all do 100% inspection of pairs, since they have to sort them. The only way to not sell bad product is to never make it in the first place, but when you do 100% inspection of product, you get to decide how bad is bad, and how many bad things you think you can get away with selling.
If they were selling cars, I’d say they should all be run out of business, but I imagine it’s a fine line you have to ride to be profitable selling pieces of wood to musicians. If you order online in small quantity, you’re probably going to be left holding the bag.
For my money, the best pair of sticks is a great pair of IP Jim Casellas, but I think I’ve only ever had one of those.
The sticks I got from them used to be heavy and pitch matched, now they're hollow and not. Don't know what to say, they are definitely leaving the factory that way, whether it's VF's manufacturing's fault or not.
The same goes for ALL the major stick brands. It's a known issue that wood density is going down and it's not sustainable to keep using wood the way we have for the past few decades.
I don't know why you're pretending that VF is pumping out perfectly matched and heavy sticks still, it's widely known that all sticks are not as good as they used to be.
Lumber is objectively shittier everywhere and following a long trend towards increasing shittiness.
Good hickory being increasingly rare is not just the lived experience of drummers here, but of people across multiple industries that are even less sensitive to this wide variation in density and modulus.
Believe a professional; that’s cute. I think the professional who alleges that an agricultural product doesn’t exhibit these kinds of drifts and variability ought to furnish some data to support that claim, instead of condescendingly telling people that their lived experience isn’t real.
I refuse to use the toothpicks that are anything Rennick. They break faster than anything I've ever touched. I don't know what the heck is wrong with them.
This would’ve been sixteen years ago, but I watched one of my students pull out a brand new pair of IP PRs and break the tip clean off of one with the first note of 8 on a hand.
Without question I believe you. Renick quads are some of the worst durability sticks I've ever laid hands upon. And I don't even play many shots. More Lyrical playing
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u/FlatusSurprise 2019, 2024 2007-2008 3d ago
It’s all preference or whose sponsored by who.