After comparing a crapload of joysticks lately, I've noticed an interesting tradeoff. It seems that the lighter the spring/microswitch in a joystick is, the less accurate it is. If you think about it, it's common sense. The lighter a spring, the slower the shaft will return to center. The same goes for microswitches, if the stick is one that has them. Take, for instance, your bog-standard Happ Competition. The default spring and microswitches provide a good all-around feel. Now, replace the stock spring with the heavy spring. You get a stick that feels heavier, but is quicker to disengage the microswitches, allowing for more exact play. Fire up Dangun Feveron with a speed 4 ship and see how easy it is to get pinpoint moves with a heavy spring. Naturally, this leads to a heavier-feeling game, since you have to put more muscle into it in order to move the stick.
As of yet, I have encountered no stick that has the best of both worlds. Either they are quite heavy or they are sloppy. A close match would be either the Happ P360 or Suzo Inductive, since they remove the microswitch element, but without a relatively heavy spring they suffer from the same problem of having the actuator tripping the sensors in the same manner a normal joystick depresses a microswitch.
Some may mention Sanwa and Seimitsu sticks. They suffer from the same problem. This became readily apparent in tests on Under Defeat. A Happ Comp with a heavy spring produced far more accurate movement than a stock Sanwa JLF.
Obviously, this really only applies to shooters where ship speed is really friggin high. DF, for instance. When you get into slower games such as Esprade or Dragon Blaze, the difference becomes negligable.
Thoughts, anyone?
Joystick Speed Vs. Accuracy
Yeah, I don't really like the stiff feel of most US sticks either. But I thought you were supposed to be controlling the ball-top on a JP stick at all times. That's how you have low force but high control, because as you say, if you let a soft stick naturally return to neutral, it takes just slightly longer, which is suicidal in fast paced games. At least that's how I tend to play: by directing the joystick back to neutral manually for the extra boost of speed, all without using much effort to move the JP stick in the first place.