Bullshit. The basic 360 pad IS as bad as people think. It's a terribly unresponsive piece of poo you have to fight with just to do fireballs.
My experience with alternatives:
MadCatz SF4 fightpad for 360 - great floating dpad, very responsive, 6 face buttons make for convenient plinking, but this pad is made from super cheap materials and WILL break down very quickly. The right side of my dpad ended up going first, while my friend has had problems with the start button dying and the dpad becoming less responsive. Great pad while it lasts, but it won't last for very long.
Hori EX 2 for 360 - makes the MadCatz pad look like a pile of shit, it's that good. Extremely responsive to the point that it feels like cheating in comparison to the default 360 pad. Also has 6 face buttons and includes shoulder buttons, triggers and analog sticks. The problem is it had some ghosting issues. If you read the Amazon reviews, quite a few of them will mention the controller moving on its own. This is happening to me too - every once in a while it will register a left press for a split second. For me this happens rarely enough that it doesn't interfere with my gameplay but there's no telling whether others would be worse, so while the dpad is absolutely friggin' amazing, it's hard to recommend this pad in good conscience. I would still get it over the MadCatz pad if you have a 30 day return to verify whether or not you're getting the ghosting problem.
I see no reason at all to use a stick for MK9. Outside of Kano there are no half circles, 360s or 720s, so the movement isn't complicated enough to warrant the precision of a stick. MK9 is perfect for pad and there's no reason to switch to stick if it's not your native input device.