what shifter are the stick people using

Perhaps I can help here folks. The Vertigate or(v-Gate) was originally designed by George Hurst and Bill Faison. They were quickly updated as feedback from the PS community (in particular Bill Jenkins) pointed out the flaws in rod design. Several years went by and Hurst engineering decided to completely redesign the Vgate when racers were still not satisfied (actually the racers had moved on to the Lenco at that time). They throw was dramatically shortened, the main body stiffened and the mechanism mirrored the current SS2 in size. These became the Ram-Rod and were somewhat hit or miss in popularity. Fast forward to when Hurst and Mr Gasket merged, the ram-rod was long gone but Mr Gasket still had the tooling for the Vertigate and now had rights to the Hurst name...bingo Hurst vertigate. They were minor changes over the years (ramrod II had the flat reverse rod., RR1 had the red knob, VGate boots changed etc.) If you look at the current V-Gate it hasnt changed much (perhaps made a little cheaper), but its design was given a final overhaul by Leonard Long years ago who really brought it up to its potential. BUT if you look at the CURRENT epitome of stick shifted drag racing you will see that actually the Ram-Rod concept is closer to what is being used in PS these days than the Vgate. (IE Liberty-5)

My personal opinion is the Ram-Rod is superior in that the throws are much shorter, its simpler, its smoother, the gate is closer to the handle, and if it matters the body is much smaller.

fyi - I started racing a stick in 1977 and havent stopped since. My daily driver in High school was a 1973 Duster 340 the I put a Ram-Rod in and loved it (I have a pic of the shifter in that car Ill post). Ive run every shifter known to man in just about every configuration. For the last 15 years (retired now) I have raced a SS/L Chevy II (oh no a Chevy!) with a Jerico and Long shifter. Three pedals please.