A striker will make or break a call. It is just as important as the call itself. Generally speaking, harder woods are good on glass/crystal/ceramic and softer woods are good on slate/copper. Most calls you see sold now that come with a 2 piece striker will either be purple heart or Dymondwood. Usually those 2 woods will run well on most any call unless you want the traditional sound of a gray slate which requires a softer wood. Don’t get hung up on using just the striker that comes with a call. While it will usually sound really good, a striker made of a different wood may make it sound incredible. You can have one pot call with 2-3 different strikers and sound like 2-3 different hens. There’s so many variables that affect the sound of the striker that it’s hard to explain. Everything from weight, length, wood, forward of center weight, tip design, and how you hold it all affect the sound it will produce. A good quality one piece striker will usually cost as much as the call cost but it’s like having several different sounds out of one call. All the guy’s mentioned above make great strikers but they can be hard to come by. JLH makes really good strikers and usually has them readily available. His frogwood and tulipwood play really well on any surface and his carbon striker really makes a slate pop.
For reference, you can look at the Janka wood hardness scale and see where the strikers listed above fall (Dymondwood won’t be on it as technically it’s a wood laminate). A lot of the really good strikers will be on the upper end of that scale. It will give you some idea of what you will be getting when you buy a striker. Tip design is basically a personal preference. To some people, a flared tip striker is more “forgiving” therefore easier to use. You just have to try different ones to see which ones give you the sound you are after. Also how you grip the striker makes a huge difference. Watch videos of the friction call championships to see how they hold the striker. I like a fairly loose grip on the striker but you may like a more firm grip. The most important thing is practice, practice, practice. The more you use it, the more natural it will feel.
