Mostly mix and match. I had an acrylic striker that didn't work too well on my aluminum pot, so I use a hardwood on it.

Generally, you can't too wrong with a 'power crystal', but my fave is a small slate, real slate, call from QB, The Finisher. It's just a slate disk in a wooden frame, one side is finished, the other is not. Really nice purrs, tree calls. It's hard to get too loud on it, which is good on pressured public land.

As for call recommendations...Go with what works. If the turkeys like it, I love it. The ceramic surfaced calls like, Sla-Tek, sound nice to my ears and are easy to use. Glass works very well for me.

Round out your collection. Don't limit yourself to one style of call. Get a box and some mouth calls. Primos and MAD have some affordable boxes. You don't need to drop big $$ on call that'll work. With a mouth call you can run a slate or a box at the same time, and sound, like 2 diff hens.

I suspect the triple surfaced calls get more hunters than turkeys IMO. I think you lose too much surface to find the sweet spot.

Have fun, and practice.