Drumsticks
There are as many sticks as there are drummers, if not more. For every style of music, there are hundreds of different sticks, each with it's own characteristics. There are three types of wood that are usually used to make a drumstick. These are Maple, Hickory and Japanese Oak. See below for details:

Maple	The lightest stick is made of maple-wood. This maple-stick is a very light, and therefor a very fast stick. It's also very flexible, so it's an ideal stick for playing light music, like Jazz.
Hickory	Stick number two is the 'hickory-stick'. This stick is made of hickory-wood. It's a more dense and rigid than the maple-stick, and therefor favored by the more 'heavy drummer', like rock-drummers. It's less flexible and heavier than the maple-stick, but it's more durable and more aggressive.
Japanese Oak	The biggest, heaviest and less flexible stick is the Japanese Oak stick. It's made of the heavy Japanese Oak-wood. It's sounds very bright on the cymbals, and is very heavy and very un-flexible.

I'd like to thank Vic Firth for most of the information about the sticks. I also play with Vic Firth sticks. They are really good!

Blasticks, brushes and mallads
There are more ways to create a variety of sounds on a drum set. You can use different types of sticks, but there is another way. You can use blasticks, brushes or mallads to create different sounds. Here are the differences between these three special sticks:

	Blasticks: these are very special things. It is a stick, but instead of a wooden top it has two- or three-millimeter thick threads, with a plastic casing. I doesn't produce as much volume as a stick, but it is as if several drummers are playing simultaneously, because each thread hits the drum just a moment before an other tread does.
	Brushes: it's like a blastick, but instead of a few thicker threads, it has lots of thin, metal threads. This produces a very special sound on the cymbals, an it can be used 'as a brush', by brushing it over the snare-drum. This requires some special technique, but it sounds very nice in some music styles.
	Mallads: these sticks are usually used for playing the marimba (a sort of xylophone) or the timpani. On a drum set they can be very well used to play the cymbals for a special effect. If you hit a cymbal with this soft-headed stick, it doesn't produce immediate sound, but the sound comes after a few moments. And if you roll over the cymbal, the sound swells, and comes to a climax. This is very nice for classical music, or for some effects in other styles, or in solo play.

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