I was coaching a client last week and we were looking at his stabilisers. “what would be the best set up for this bow?” he asked. This is a question that I get asked regularly and I always put a reign on my natural desire to show them what is the best and go through a simple test to allow an individual to select the best set up for an individual. It is important to note that, unlike some static metods, this method is only interested in the dynamic aspects of stabilistaion. Of course at this point you must be clear exactly what stabilisers are there for: 10% perceived balance during the draw, 80% stability of aim and facilitation of execution, 10% feel on follow through (but if the former are there you can live with a bow with awful follow through 
); 0% VIBRATION DAMPING. Vibration damping can be sorted out, if need be, after balance has been attested to.
Proviso:
There is only a point to this if you have no obvious issues of bow torquing or poor alignment (either of these two problems may be assumed if the sight ring or centre of the scope does not over the arrow in calm conditions).
So here is the best method:
1) Shoot until you are shooting arrows comfortably in the middle of the target.
2) Remove all of the stabilisers from the bow, including side weights and backweights. Shoot again at the same target/distance. You will experience the bow moving rapidly left and right but if the draw length and alignement is good should hold pretty much rock steady up and down. Many of my clients who have added stabilisers fairly arbitrarily are surprised by how still the bow sits vertically and in some cases how much tighter the groups are with no stabilisers.
3) Add the long rod (for recurve archers this point should include your desired vbar extender and vbar with no twins) . You expect the left/right “bobble” to disappear at this point. Without this left right movement (or greatly reduced amplitude and frequency) you expect to keep the solid vertical stability of no stabilisers . If this vertical stability has been lost you need to look at length and weight of centre stabiliser ( random vertical movement make centre stabiliser longer and heavier, dropping out of the gold make it shorter or lighter).
4) Twins will reduce any left and right movement
5) So you should now be at a comfortable stabiliser set up that you do not have to fight against to give you good results, this is your basic balance between long rod and twins, and you are ready to fine tune it. A quick note on back weights:these are used to help purely in the grip/hand interface and can be added to increase the contact of the base of the hand in the grip (so you can use a back weight or shoot a slightly higher grip if you need one).
6) Take an A4 sheet of white paper with a thick vertical black line on it that you can see at the distance you are shooting at. Shoot a series of arrows from the top to the bottom of this line, if you do not have a tight line (same amount left and right of the line) of arrows then add/subtract weight from the side rods (in the case of recurve shooters-shorten vbar extender) also changes in the angle of the vbar will tighten or worsen the consistency of the arrow line.
7) Now check stabiliser set up by shooting along an horizontal line: If the arrows are not tight to this line in the horizontal plane then you have a grip or alignment problem that needs to be addressed. Within the area of stabilisation there are two areas to look at: check that there is no movement in the bow hand wrist AT ALL during the draw or try a back weight. If there is still an issue then you need to go back to technical aspects as this is not a stabilisation issue.
You now have the correct ratio of stabiliser lengths and weights and if you are using one, vbar angle. If you feel you want a heavier set up add weights across the system to keep this ratio.
