The basic wooden or plastic sticks are absolutely fine. Our colleague, Steve, who can be seen diaboling on our home page, used cheap, wooden sticks for his first few years and they didn't hold him back.
A long, flexible nylon control stick, its flexibility helps to generate the diabolo's speed and its nylon shaft extends grinds. Its longer length also enables the diabolist to make slightly wider catches. This is the heaviest of all our diabolo sticks, therefore making suicides and genocides significantly more difficult.
Metal sticks are by far the best for grinds. In many cases a diabolo will grind for nearly twice as long on metal sticks than it would do on a wooden one. Not quite as good for suicides.
The flexibility of the energy sticks makes the diabolos accelerate slightly quicker. Also, they also have a slightly smoother shaft than the wooden sticks, making for longer grinds.
These diabolo sticks are used by most professional diabolists. They are so light that stick-release tricks are made a great deal easier. The thin, smooth shaft also makes them second in line with the metal sticks for grind.
Great at night, providing you have a light-up diabolo that you can see to go with it. The batteries go inside the handle, which are a little bit wobbly to hold, making them a very nice item for night-time performing but not suitable for sustained practise.
