Today I tried the whip tops: they are great!!!
They are easy to start. The smaller one sometimes I got to buzz with just one whip hit, although other times it required many. The sound I got is not very loud but it is satisfactory. But from the much larger lighted top I only got a low hum.
On the smooth floor of the garage I could leave the smaller one spinning for over 2 minutes between whippings and the lighted one for a full 3 minutes. Between 2 and 4 whippings were generally enough to rev them up again.
The lighted top gives a superb show. It has 15 ultra-bright LEDs plus a red laser pointing down (so it traces a circle). One column of LEDs turn on an off too fast to be perceived by the eye but when the top is spinning they produces a series of light points around the top. The other column of LEDs varies with time at a much lower rate, giving variable circles of light around the top.
The whip material is a rubber with string reinforcement running lengthwise. I got single core and triple core material. The first one works well for all my whip tops. The other one was too heavy even for my old very large whip top. I divided one 3-core whip into a 2-core whip and a 1-core whip. That new 2-core material still overwhelmed all the tops except my largest one. I still need to do more experiments to see if it works better for that top than the single core material.
By the way, I discovered that using whipping material longer than the stick is not a good idea: on a miss you can end up in self flagellation!
