Almost everything about learning how to spin tops defies logic, is counter-intuitive, or is otherwise generally frustrating.  It’s all backwards, I tell ya!  The following bits of advice should help move things forward again.

Which top?
As you may have already discovered, there are two basic types of tops, fixed tip and bearing tip tops.  Bearing tops seem to be easier for beginners because they give the player more time to set up for tricks.  The bearings themselves can be difficult to remove for maintenance sometimes.  Fixed tip tops are easy to maintain and offer a different range of tricks that are a little more difficult at first, but won’t spin as long as bearing tops… until you learn to regenerate.

One thing to note is when you throw a top to spin it on the ground, most likely it won’t be straight up and down, it will be leaning a little bit.  A fixed tip top will travel around and correct itself to stand up straight, but a bearing tip top will not (if the bearing is spinning correctly and doesn’t lock).

For size, anything in between 2 and 2.5 inches in diameter is good.  Any smaller or bigger increases difficulty for beginners.  Heavier tops can be easier to manage than light tops, but the weight should be both at the widest part of the top and at the lowest part of the top.  Center weight reduces a top’s spin time.  Oh, and just a note; lighter tops don’t break televisions.

What’s the best material for tips?
For fixed tip play, metal tips are definitely better for fixed tips because it adds bottom weight and because it is more durable than plastic and stays pointy longer.  The disadvantage is that it will do a little more damage to your floor and/or toes than a plastic tip will, and if it gets a burr it can tear up your hand pretty good.  For bearing play durability is great, but keep in mind pointy-ness doesn’t matter because the tip stays still while the top spins…

Before you start, tape your top!
Some two-peice tops break easy if you don’t tape where the crown meets the body.  The Duncan Rip Cord and Bearing King are especially fragile at this joint.  Get some electrical tape and wrap the tape so the seam is going with the flow - if you throw right handed, hold the end of the tape under your left thumb with the point of the top pointing away from you, wraping the tape to the right.  Wrap it twice and cut at the same spot where it begins to have minimal effect on balance.  Don’t pull to tight, the tape will stretch back - only pull hard enough for the tape to lie flat on the surface with no ruffles.

String length
The “correct”  string length is not based on the size of the person throwing it, it is based on the size and weight distribution of the top and the thickness of the string being used.  Sometimes manufacturers supply string that is too long or too short making it difficult for a beginner to… begin.

IMO, most tops fit in one of the two minimum sizes listed below.

60" regular string:
Duncan Imperial
Spintastics Sidewinder / Gladiator / Blizzard
Yo Yo Jam Bulldog / Top Dog
Yo Yo Factory Acrobat
Strummol8 STB 2.0

64" regular string:
Duncan Bearing King / Rip Cord

64" thicker string:
Spintastics Trompo Ggrande / Trompo Bearing
Strummol8 Giulia
Strummol8 Titi / Sophia

Now, if you want to get into this a little further, you can determine if your string is too long or too short by a simple observation, but for this to work, you must keep your release constant and with the tip straight up.  Throw the top and if the tip is pointing out the same way as your toes, then the string is too short, if it is pointing the other way, the string is too long.

You can compensate for this by adjusting your wrist angle (always hold the top in your hand the same way, just tilt your wrist).  String too short - rotate your wrist before you throw so the tip points away from you a bit, kind of an underhand throw.  String too long - rotate your wrist as you throw, turning your palm towards the ground, kind of an overhand throw.

If you want to get way, way, waaaay into this, there is no ideal length of string, or thickness, or number of wraps, there is an ideal “line” on the top where the string needs to start it’s tug.  If wound beyond that line with a longer string, the top will under-rotate, if wound below the line, the top will over-rotate.  If you understand that, and how to make top string, you can manipulate the thickness of the string to get to that “line”, and thus control the length.

Another thing to note is that you can change the “line” on a top by changing the weight distribution.  Top-heavy tops want longer string, bottom-heavy tops like shorter string, so adding rim or tip weight can help to control string length.

Only after you understand how to control string length should you consider sizing string to your preference.  I prefer not to use strings no longer than 68", which happens to be very close to my height.  Long strings don’t seem to bother bearing players, but long strings are difficult to control for regeneration tricks; extra string flopping around is a nuisance.

String care and materials
The best string is unbleached cotton with a tight twist and little to no fuzziness. 
When it gets dirty, sticky, or starts to stink, don’t throw it away, wash it with your undies!  Seriously!  Just keep it away from fabric softener and don’t put in in the dryer, let it line dry. 
Cotton + humidity = yuk.  Polyester and / or bamboo strings are better on the humid days, but you may have to make such a thing yourself… here’s how:

Throw  - slow, no elbow and not too low, bro
Don’t put the point in the web of your hand, it only confuses matters.  Always hold the top so that the tip is pointing straight up.  The button has to be lower than the wind when you let it go, if the button is above the wind, it will uncoil instead of unwind.  Pivot at your shoulder, no elbow or wrist action… pretend you are a robot.

Correcting the tilt of a top as it spins
If you were balancing a baseball bat upright in your hand, you would move your hand in the direction it is leaning to balance it.  For a top, do the opposite.  Move your hand in the direction the tip is pointing, which is the opposite of the way it is leaning.  Since the top precesses (leans in a circular motion), the ideal corrective movement is somewhat circular, but for now, pick one direction to wait for and move it then… like wait for the tip to be pointed the same direction your thumb is and then move your hand in the direction of your thumb.

Balancing a rough-spinning hollow top
(pieces of this were borrowed from Herman Lau’s article)
Injection-molded-plastic is not the most uniform material when it comes to density, and this is the reason why many tops just don’t spin smooth right out of the package.  Fear not!  You can balance hollow plastic tops fairly easily (as long at the cap comes off).  All you need is a small blob of sticky goo and some time (goo explained below).

The goo I speak of is Blue-Tac. It is also known as Stic-Tac, E-Z Tac, etc, and is mainly used as a poster-to-wall adhesive.  You can find it at drug stores, office supply stores and supermarkets. It comes in several colors, but the blue stuff seems to work the best. 
First you need to determine the cap-to-body position that gives the least amount of vibration.  Spin the top and note how smooth or rough it is. Then take the cap off, rotate it 180 degrees and replace. Spin the top again. If it is not smoother, return cap to its original position, and MARK IT SOMEHOW.  Occasionally, for some tops, that is all that’s necessary to balance your top. In the vast majority of cases however, the top will still need balancing.

Break off a small piece the size of a pea. Knead it into a ball.  Stick it on the underside of the cap, close to the rim, pretend wherever you stick it is the 12 of a clock face.  Spin it.  if it is worse than before, take the cap off and put the putty at 6 o’clock.  Spin it.  Better?  Keep testing different spots until you find the sweet spot.  After you find the sweet spot, take some putty away and see if it is better or worse with less weight.  If worse, put what you removed back and add a little more. 
There’s a lot of trial an error here, but feeling the top getting smoother should motivate you to finish the job.  Once balanced, the point of a perfectly balanced top should be absolutely still when spinning on a hard surface or on the palm of your hand. In fact, if the top is perfectly balanced, you will definitely feel a pronounced eerie lightness to it while it is spinning on your palm.

Trick resources
http://www.spintastics.com/SSTvideos.html

This is a must read for any beginner. Thanks Chris

Thanks for this guide! I just purchased a Bearing King, so I really need some help here, as I have never thrown a top before.

its a blast !!!

Yes yes yes I know necro but great write-up and the. Ideas made great sense. Thanks for Doing the math and making 1+1=2 otherwise i would be confused.

Been thinking about buying one and i think i will use this to my advantage.

This used to be pinned to the top? A sticky or whatever? Eh?

Oh I see, Pins are per user now. Hmm.

I’m just getting stated with spin tops. I’ve watched a few videos that give me the basics of a throw. However, I’m challenged with getting the top to spin on it’s tip consistently. I’m often getting a spin on it’s side or crown.
I’m trying to keep things the same throw after throw attempt. I’s hard to determine what made one throw successful and what made the next unsuccessful.
Any fine tune points would be great. Quality instructional videos even better.
Kind of sad to see the spin top topic area is highly neglected.

Stick with it, youll get your consistency.

The 2 biggest learning curves are the initial throw/placement and then learning to boomerang.

After that you start picking things up at a accelerated rate.

Well, if your tip orientation is wrong in random ways, usually it’s because you are following through with a motion of your wrist or elbow that is changing the angle of the top at the release.
When you let go with your thumb, just stop your arm and let the top go, tip straight up, the string does all the work after that, so keep your hand pretty still after the release.

If your top is always landing the wrong way, but with the same issue (tip always the same direction) you have a string length issue.

What I did was practice my throw 2-3 times without letting go of the top, stop immediately at the end of your throw(still holding the top) and check the orientation of the top. Is the tip exactly 90 degrees from the ground, ie pointed straight up. If not, without changing the position of your throw hand( still at the end of your throw) reorient the top so the tip is facing straight up. Test one more time to verify the tip still points up. Then throw. This will get you used to the way you need to hold it.

I have improved some. I would guess I’m getting about 70% success. I still have some points of confusion. I’ve seen different trowing techniques. Some look like the throw stars with the arm straight out a little above the shoulder, and the trow ends low by the waist going all the way across the body before the release.
Others just go across the body at the waist and stop a little past center for the release.
Others do some variation of this. All of them are slow, not fast whip throws like I’m use to playing yoyo.
I’ve been trying to imitate these different techniques to see what works consistently. I’m in a state of experimentation to learn from my mistakes.
I guess the biggest challenge is not being able to see my own mistakes.
It would probably be good idea to have someone make a video of me so I can see my own mistakes.

The technique can vary, especially if you are simply trying to get a spinner on the ground compared to trying to get a very strong spin and a boomerang return. The faster the spin you need, the choppier the throw is going to look.
I believe the most important factor is a clean release that doesn’t tilt the top or make the string pull the top off course. Once you let go, the string does the work, so a tight wrap is important too.

I can tell you that I struggled for a long time. I also jacked up a few tops and sent many flying across the room. The mechanics of my body are not normal. I even have to wrap the string around my finger because no matter what I tried I would almost always send the button and string flying too. So my throw would not look like most people’s. There are several variables that can affect your throw and it’s very hard at first to determine which one is causing the most problems. And quite often, all of those variables are being changed slightly at each throw so makes it more difficult to narrow down. 70% ain’t bad though. There’s not going to be one absolute correct throw. Each person develops their own version after getting the basics down. And even the best players will still throw stinkers. I know that the experts will tell you that string length is absolute. But from my own experience I found there’s wiggle room. Something I did, just to change a variable that was easily controlled, was shorten my string by wrapping one loop around the 2 fingers that the button sits behind. Then give several throws. If still landing off, I’d wrap another loop and try. I noticed the top slowly coming upright until I hit a length that the top landed upright nearly every time with little effort. I made my string that length. I’ve handed it to maybe 5 other people who never threw before and with a moments coaching on the throw, were able to land it first try. This may help you. I’d consider this similar to a set of training wheels though, as the shorter string actually robs a noticeable amount of spin and actually makes other tricks more difficult. Like training wheels would make it hard to ride wheelies. I actually just started to work with a more proper length string yesterday and; having gotten pretty good with the shorter one, found it much easier to compensate for the longer string. The experts will disagree with my method but this actually worked for me. The nice thing about wrap the string to adjust length is you’re not destroying it.

The length of the string determines how much the tip will rotate from pointing up at the release, to where ever it is when it leaves the string. You can compensate for string length, but the normal set up is for the tip to rotate from straight up to straight down. The string length also is going to determine how much room you have to work with when you start doing tricks, just like a yo-yo string does.

I’d also like to add that this string was only for putting the top on the floor. I did notice that switching to a 60” string caused me to have to set my point of aim further from me in order to get the right results. The short string would not allow me to boomerang at all. That’s where what @kevinm was saying comes into play. A properly adjusted string length is going to be crucial to advance. The method I mentioned was only used by me to develop my throw. The string I used was 50” to the knot at the end of the string. So it’s not that much shorter than recommended. But that little bit made all the difference for me. It works for me from my Duncan Imperial to my Spintastics Quicksilver. That’s very different size and weight tops but that 50” string works perfectly on them all. I’m sure that it is compensating for some major deficiency in my throw. I’ve never been able to throw anything straight. And I’ve tried. Baseballs, frisbees, bowling balls, bean bags. You name it, the mechanics of my body are off. So instead of adjusting my throw to match the string, I adjusted the string to match my throw. It worked for me, that’s all I can say.

Thanks for all the helpful advice. Like anything else practice makes perfect.
Still some questions come up.
Did I make a good choice with the yoyo factory short circuit for a beginner top?
I know the equipment shouldn’t matter if you have a good technique. However, genuinely poor equipment “can” be a cause of some frustration.
I’m considering a BC wooden top.
I’m I going to experience much difference with this?
Also I’ve seen videos with considerably large tops. What would it be like playing with this?

Expensive!!

Seriously though. The Short Circuit is an excellent starter top. I mean it’s a nice fixed tip period. I’ve not played a nice wood myself but I’d like to. I imagine the wood to be heavier by a bit and that’ll feel different. But the Short Circuit is inexpensive, tough as nails, and easy to replace. All these things make it a great choice for a starter. I have 3 and all are very well balanced and smooth spinners straight out of the box.

I agree with the previous post, the short circuit is a solid fixed tip top and it does not need any tweaking to get right.
To learn your basics, it is great. When you start to advance with different tricks you may want a larger or heavier top to learn to regenerate spin and stuff like that, to have a larger, slower target.
The very large tops are kind of in a class of their own.
I was working on a trick called staircase to heaven for a long time using the short circuit and I wasn’t having any luck. The folks on the itopspin.com forum suggested experimenting with tops with a different tip. I started using a Trompo Star and got the trick in a day or two. The thing is, I can do it with a short circuit now, but I wasn’t getting the feel for it trying to learn the trick with it. So it’s kind of like yo-yos, I think you will get an idea you need to try something different when you hit a wall working with the short circuit. Solid wood tops are not as responsive or forgiving as the YYF, no real advantage unless you are playing battle tops.
Most people I know did not learn on anything fancy, there are a lot of pretty good plastic tops.