my school uses vic firth sticks. so we use white electrical tape and we tape from the tip down to the T in the Firth

When I have to do it for time sake with my students at a contest, I just try to tape it like a barber pole, or candy stripe. Then to clean it up, I put a small piece at the up next to the tip. I like to use black or white because they seem to be the most tasteful. But as someone pointed out in another post, the tape does effect the sound. It tends to dull or mute the sound a bit. But, with today's high volume equipment you may not notice it as much, like you would a practice pad. The white Ralph Hardimans might be another option besides tape.

I use the white Ralph Hardimans and tape from about an inch from the bead to the beginning of Vic.

With the Hardimons since they're already white, I just tape the top to about the part where the vic firth logo starts. The white just looks really clean with our uniforms. However, with sticks like the mcnutts and hannums (two of my favorite sticks.) I tape the ugly poopy brown color because I hate it and I like the look of white the best. However, for my own personal playing and practice, the tape kind of gets annoying.

We tape from the bead to the fulcrum with white electrical tape

We leave about 4 inches of stick at the bottom when we tape our sticks.

On my Hardimons, I tape from the bead down to the F in firth, then from the butt to the r in corpsmaster. I taped my ancient DC-1's in the the same spots. On my Scott Johnsons I usually only tape from the bead down to the F. In school, our percussion instructor taped our hardimons similar to how I do it but with an extra layer making a crossing pattern down the stick. I've never used sticktape, as white electrical tape does the job.

We use white electrical tape on hardimons and tape from the bead down to the V in vic firth

I usually just tape over the parts that are starting to look like a beaver snack =P

white tape from the butt to the tip.