I grew up loving wico's the most. Even had a Wico for my C64, so I have a predisposition to love the leafy, grommety joysticks. Those happ batts that flooded the scene in the 90's were not my cup of tea, so Sanwa would not have been on my radar at all, except I was curious about all the buzz around it. When I was selling encoders a few years back, I took advantage of having routine packages from China and had them send me a bunch of goodies for cheap that I wanted to try out.
I got the JLF balltop, and was actually blown away. It was light, it was elegant. The shaft was narrow, but it still felt strong. It slide in and out of position with minimal effort. I really didn't mind that it was a clicky joystick, because it was so nimble. It was like handing a rapier to a guy used to swinging around a battle-axe.
Then it came to product testing. Fighters, and beat-em-ups were stellar. vertical shooters, other 8-ways it was ok, but I have tried better. Then I tried playing classics, pacman, donkey kong etc...terrible, especially the 4 way games. I couldn't get the movements I was trying to achieve. Well, that is common of 8-way joysticks on a 4 way game, but I had also ordered restrictor plates, and tossed on a 4 way diamond restrictor. Ugh..even with the restrictor, just couldn't get the action I wanted out of it. It was like the joystick was too smooth and made me incapable of making harsh, decisive movements.
So my verdict is, if you are out to play more modern 8-ways, the JLF is a damn good joystick. It is a little to lopsided to be a good all around stick. At least without modding them like BadMouth talked about.