[jmc]

For tournaments, I think you really want to give your players the smallest number of low denom chips possible because they will always be obsolete in a few blind levels -- you'll just make more work for yourself later. Personally, I wouldn't give out more than 10x $5 chips.

Also, if you have $5 and $25 chips, I don't think you need $10 chips on the table.

Do you guys like playing with huge #'s of chips or something?

10x T5 (50)
10x T25 (250)
7x T100 (700)
= T1000

If you prefer larger stacks
15x T5
13x T25
6x T1000

I've always struggled with T1000 structures that utilize T5 chips -- usually the blinds have to increase to 25/50 pretty quickly, and then nobody wants to use T5 chips anymore. You can experiment with introducing antes with the T5 chips, or try skipping around the 25/50 level (i.e. use a 20/40 and 30/60 levels).