In my experience hickory chips easier, but, the sound is magnificent. My Sweets HG hickory Ken is my favorite, despite taking a chunk out of the slip ring.
@Sir Spike , yes hickory will chip easier, but it does have a nice sound. If you play ovee grass or carpet its a great wood.
Yeah I normally play over carpet but I noticed that with my ozora keyaki, if I drop it on the carpet and the ken and tama collide I usually get a dent in a cup or something where nothing will happen to the birch tk16. How would hickory hold?
Hickory holds up great! This is my RWB classic hickory paired with a HG maple/walnut stripe. You can see the beating my tama has taken, but the hickory spike remais sharp. I glued it when brand new and applied my home made sealant. It was my main jammer for about three months. I took this set up everywhere. I have not broken in the Koto S1 hickory ken to give you a pic. I decided to play the S2 maple walnut setup instead of the S1.
Honestly I just need more money constantly. This can be such a cheap hobby but then a line of beautiful damas like this comes out.
I really want to cop one because I don't own a PNW yet, and I hear great things about them, but I also have far too many kendamas now, many of them still fresh and unplayed, that I can't justify spending money on another one at the moment. So I do hope they do a rerelease (like @Ben Lowe said), because I doubt I'll get one before they all sell out. I like the way Kris Bosch's looks and I like the wood combination of hickory with walnut, but I also would want to support my favorite player and the person I feel most connection to from the group, which would be Cazz. (And his dama looks sick too!)