i played with controllers for over 10 years. I almost never used sticks over at arcades cuz here all arcades are pretty much dead, so if i ever tried to play with a stick it always felt somehow wrong.
a few months ago i finally bought a stick, hoping it would help me on my sfIV game(well, mostly cuz the 360 dpad is just awful).
At first i wasn't really happy with my new toy: everything felt a lot harder, and i couldn't imput properly any motion, even the simplier(fireball and shorykens, for example). but after a month of practice...well, the stick changed everything.
It did not only improved my game, but the main difference is that playing now feels completely different; using a controller implies, no matter what, some mashing in order to do things: with the stick i have the sensation i am controlling what i am doing. Plus, the button layout is just so much better than the controller's; hitting multiple buttons was a pain in the ass on the controller, and doing button mapping sometimes was a pain; the only issue i have with the stick is that i can't do 236236 or 623 as fast as i was doing on the controller. but maybe it's just cuz i need to pratice a little more.
I still have to test the stick on gg/bb tho. 'til now i have tried it only on battle fantasia/street fighter 2hd/IV and garou.
(oh, and i forgot to mention: before buying the stick, i hated charge characters. now i ♥ them. nice article op btw)