I love the amount of stick/slip on my old beat in Jeremy Van Reeven Tama, I'm pretty sure it was Pro-clear (correct me if I'm wrong). Lighthouse flips are super fun, My only triple lighthouse flip was on that jammer.
My favorite kendama right now is my Nihon Ash Slaydawg. Plays exactly as advertised. LOL clear is super sticky, Ken shape is awesome for most things (except slingers), bearing makes life easier, and it is aesthetically super pleasing. Weights are dead on too (74g Ken, 76g tama).
My B-day slay dog weights are so atrocious, 74 tama, 84 Ken. I picked it up at MKO for 10$ cheaper, but honestly it turned out to be a bad deal...
My Sweets Ruisch mod is super honed in for lighthouses, lunars, and stalls! The pro clear and beech wood is amazing!
10g isn't that bad. I picked up a shin Fuji (black seal) natty. And the ken to tama difference was about 18 or so. I haven't weighed it in a couple of years but i remember that being pretty bad. And the dude who sold it to me said it was weighed nice. But I was new to dama so I didn't know any better.
Same. The local filipino kendama brand sold me a half-split with horrendous weight difference. Thankfully, I've found that really heavy tamas go well with a TK-16 ken.
The hole in the tama because without the hole in the tama kendama is just a fancy version of ball in a cup. The hole also makes it easy to string the kendama; without the hole you would be like, "let me just tie this lasso around this wooden ball and then play catch with it...by myself."
My favorite dama is a Mugen musou planet. It has a grip but some slip so it is not just a really sticky ball. It has great shape haven’t weighed yet but feels pretty smooth .
I find myself continually coming back to my natty prime. The thing is absolutely beat to hell but that's part of why I love it so much. Its honed for birds, handle stalls, and pretty much everything else. It's also so beat that I don't even flinch when I accidentally slam it against concrete while working on string flow. The prime shape is beefy enough that it's super durable, but also also designed well enough that it's good for pretty much every kind of play. I definitely have damas that work better for some specific tricks, but you gotta love the all arounders.