David Weaver
Dan's black and a slurried washita would probably be my go-to (or not necessarily slurried, just agitated if you want to use the washita as a middle stone prior to a black or trans stone).

Actually black or trans from dans.

Nearly all washitas are good. Their level of coarseness only varies a little except for the very finest and then the rest of their behavior is in how you use them. They're safe to buy used, just as long as you avoid the listings where people think the're a $100+ stone.

There are some on ebay from time to time for about $50, once in a while less, often not labeled as washita.

UK sellers usually have half a dozen at any one time, but shipping from the UK is expensive. While I notice the difference in fineness from one to the next, I don't know if most would notice that much - especially if you can abrade the surface.

Flatness can be an issue if they're heavily worn - I flatten the stones that have a lot of sway by using the idler (hard contact point) on a cheap belt sander - and outside with a mask if there's no breeze.

I just checked naturalwhetstone.com and their pictures of softs still look good. Actually, many of the inexpensive softs are really good coarse stones - NW's are good, so are the ones marked "case" brand, etc - the ones with kind of banding on the surface. They're generally coarse and fast.

IF the washita seems a challenge (could be out of flat, always used, etc), a soft from one of the non-dan's places above, then a "hard" from dans (not true hard, but one the grade below) and the black or trans is a really nice progression.

I talked to dan on the phone years ago (or rather, he was over the shoulder of the CS guy) and they don't have access to real washita. Their washita grade stone is just really soft fragile low density stone (which they readily stated) and it's not worth having - mine was broken before it got to me (no big deal, I was curious to see what a really low density soft was like and it wasn't expensive), but the real issue with it was very soft and fragile and didn't hold its structure on the surface that well. It just ended up feeling like it was crushed on the surface and lost the fast bite that the cheap softs above have.