So long as sticks are made of wood, there will be some variance -- heavy pairs, light pairs, mismatched pairs, warped pairs, etc. Blame mother nature for not making every tree exactly the same. It's not limited to any one stick model or manufacturer.

The last two bricks of Aungst's I ordered; every pair was mismatched and total crap for quality. They were shattering in a few hours.

The Hardimons, like a lot of VF stuff that enters into mass production, seemed to have a bad run in the early 2000's, but the last hundred pairs I've been through were nice.

Lately I've been getting some pairs of Scott Johnson's that are so dense, you'd swear they weren't wood- but an awesome heavy weight and a great high pitch that made the drums sound that nano-bit better.

All of the hardimans that i have used have all been crap. they were all different weights and i had 2 that were even different lengths!! yea, when you find a good pair they are money but that is like a 1 in 5-7 chance. take some time picking out a good pair and your good to go. I personally rather buying 6 individual pairs rather than a brick because i can pick my pairs and the extra few bucks is worth it.

it is always better to buy individual pairs over bricks, but the problem becomes availability. Most instructors don't just run to the local music store to pick up sticks. Thats were Steve Weiss comes into play. It is more efficient to buy in bricks and try to pitch match with in the brick then to have to deal with budget issues from the school and running to stores were they probably won't have enough in stock. Personally I always pitch match and roll my own sticks.. when the choice is mine..

my issues with bricks of sticks is we had a bunch of "bananas" in the bunch. that is ridiculous. pitch matching is one thing. when 4 out of the 6 pairs are warped ya Vic Firth got a call.

I have only played with Hardimon's on occasion, for the most part I
ve only used the Scott Johnson. However most of the pairs I've bought, the problem for me wasn't the mis-match, I just always felt they were a little back-heavy. I played with a pair of Pro-Mark System Blue sticks and aside from the finish on the wood, they were really balanced, it was however, ONE pair. I hope they come out really well a majority of the time, and I hope they fix that damn TERRIBLE finish.

If you want to talk about dense wood, pick up a pair of MS$ Magnums. Holy sticks of Tom Float those are the heaviest stick you will EVER play with!