I thought I'd take a chance on a bulk order of 7A drumsticks. I have bought the bundle bag before at The Guitar Center and most of those sticks had a fairly severe warp/bend to them - so I hoped for better from these sticks.I eagerly tore into my Amazon package and was stopped dead in my tracks. The sticks were wrapped in a seemingly titanium-reinforced shrink wrap that took me for freaking ever to puncture. Once the nuclear-bomb-proof plastic wrap had been removed I could actually see the sticks and, viola! The sticks were straight! I spent a little bit of time rejoicing over that fact and then got myself together and inspected the new sticks a bit closer. They were packaged, quite nicely, two to a set in a stylish, heavy paperboard sleeve. The sticks fit quite snugly in the sleeve and I had to coax them out with a few cuss words, threats directed towards their mother, and some body English. After extracting them from their snug sleeve, I held them up and gave them a good once over. They felt a bit light, almost sort of hollow. The balance was good, though, and they felt good in my hands. I then inspected the tip of the stick and found it was a bit odd looking, and was not tapered well; it was rather fat. Yes, I just used the "f" word describing the tip of the stick. I have tile counters in my kitchen and ran through a few double stroke rolls, paradiddles, and some eighth notes. The sticks sounded a bit hollow against the tiles; not at all the heavy sound I was expecting from, say, a Vic Firth. I gave them a skeptical glance out of the corner of my eye, snorted suspiciously, but figured I'd give them a shot. So, I tossed them in my drumstick bag and headed off to practice.Once at practice I slathered them up real good with pine tar (it keeps the sticks from sliding out of my hands - and it smells like, well, like pine trees. Just make sure the pine tar doesn't extend beyond the label on the stick - or you might get tossed out of the band) and commenced my warm up. So far so good...But not so fast!!After running through 4 songs in practice and then playing three of them live, the fatso tip of my right hand (ride cymbal) stick had pretty much totally turned into splinters (I am Groot) - and they were all over the drum set! It was snowing drum stick splinters - which might have been cool if we were playing, say, "White Christmas" but were weren't. So it wasn't!On a side note: I hate it when wood splinters get stuck between the drum head and the rim...I'm not sure what kind of exotic, soft-maple these sticks are made out of but, whatever it is, it isn't hard enough to stand up to a beating against a Zildjian 22" ping ride. Meh.If you don't play very hard these sticks might hold up for you (exactly how hard can you play with a 7A anyway??). I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I could do better by going outside and pulling a branch down off the maple tree in my backyard - I'd just have to clean off the smaller branches and leaves. On second thought, maybe I'll leave them on - I could go for the "Treebeard" look.I'm figuring on going through a pair of these sticks every time I play - which is not a great value - but at least I'll have a good pile of kindling to get the wood stove fired up with this winter.I'd suggest taking your chances with the grab bag at The Guitar Center. The nice thing about the warped, bendy sticks is that you can play your drums from around the corner.PS. These sticks are made of "selected" maple - it says so right on the stick. Weird, I thought maybe they were made of "unselected" maple...