Mike, sounds like your trying to fool around a bit without investing much, so I'll focus there.
first, someone may have said it, but I think you will have more luck searching speed line as opposed to zip...
I have experimented a bit and here's what works for me.
-I get into the tree with as many slings as possible. They are all girth-hitched and taped onto biners. I like the "shoulder length" slings which are just long enough you can sling them over your shoulder "bandolier style" if you so wanted. The benefit of this length is that they are large enough for most small wood, but not long enough to hang up on your boots, etc. I use biners that are far less than trustworthy depending on the targets. Ill double up on larger chunks.
-I use a smaller diameter rope, 8mil static rock rope. The smaller diameter yields less friction, hence more travel. Obviously, I rarely send anything big on it, but if the slope is great and forces are low then I'll send tops too. I usually, get a ratio of 1:1 "glide slope" with this setup. Meaning If I am 30 feet up, my pieces will travel 30 feet from the base of trunk. If you put a pulley on each piece, you can almost double the ratio! I have shopped around for individual sheaves to place on all my biners, but have never commited to ordering any. They would be similar to the Petzl ULTRALEGERE. But, metal, not nylon and with a larger aperature. Individual pulleys on everything would be nice, but slower to rig.
-On the ground we usually just have a pulley to redirect the line and keep the groundman out of harms way. Sometimes we'll use M/A.
In the tree I usually just wrap the line around the trunk a couple times and clip with a locker. Its quick and easy to bump up every whorl or two. Then I girth hitch all the branches, clip them on the line and cut in the appropriate order. While groundman is cleaning up the load, I am moving up and slinging the next series of branches.
Cautions: eventually, using non-locking biners, you will have a branches that unclip. Another worry is that although the system is inherently dynamic I've found myself overconfident in the dynamic properties.
I haven't had reason to get into the more elaborate trolley systems that many fellas on here have but I'm sure there will come a day.
I really like speedlines and find them especially efficient in excurrent removals when you can run everything to the chipper!