I recently purchased 2 UltraStik 360s (u360's) from a reseller on ebay. Unfortunately, one of them arrive with a broken usb connector (it only works when you hold the cable in a certain position) and is being sent back to the reseller for repairs.
However, I got the other one installed and working. Even with the medium spring, the throw is fairly light. I'm running with no restrictor on (they sell several optional ones), so the throw is pretty long - not obscene - but still slightly longer than the Happ Compeition it's replacing.
The lack of clicks is somewhat disconcerting and it's a little easier to loose track of where the exact compass points are with no click references. But that's something I'll get used to, and I guess no one ever complains about lack of clickiness.
I opted for the bat design handles, which I gather are a little taller than the balltops and a closer match to the comps (though still a tad shorter overall). The plastic is smoother than the happs and maybe a little cheaper feeling, but still quite sturdy. Minor complaint though.
As far as game performance goes, it all works as advertised. 8 way works just as good as the comps, with the exception that the longer throw makes the double forward dash in Street Fighter a little trickier -but not impossible- to hit. Otherwise it seems just as accurate, no problems pulling off anything else.
4 way is night and day, no comparison. I was actually able play pacman and not get stuck in every corner. Everything works as advertised there. Though I haven't set up Q-bert to work on diagonals yet.
Analog also seems to work pretty well, though this does bring up one issue - centering. Even with the spring, there is significant center play. This isn't a big deal with 4/8 way games as there is a generous deadzone set up, but with analog games the centering is an issue. It's not that the center play is any worse than any other stick, you just notice it with analog games a lot more.
Software-wise UltraMap is simple and easy to use. It seemed to have random settings when first installed though (Required joys 1 & 3 installed? Restrictor set to on for joy 1, none on joy 2, and some custom ones on 3 & 4?). The only serious complaint I have is when I set up my Fron-end (Maximus Arcade) to automatically download maps based on games (as suggested for MameWah), it throws up an error message if there is no pre-defined maps. Given that I have a recent full set of roms, that's a lot of predefined maps to create. So I don't know if that feature will help me. It would be nice if it defaulted to a certain map if there was no other one specified, or at least not throw up an error message.
Regarding the broken usb connector on the second stick, for what it's worth, I asked Andrew (from Ultimarc) and he says they do support the product no matter where or who it was purchased from. I opted to have the reseller repair the item, mostly because it was free and I don't know how much it will cost to fix or replace it with Ultimarc, but the option was there.
Anyway, those are my first impressions. If I have any more thoughts or experiences I will post here.