hair particle system, change path to object

i’ve just started to play with a hair particle system and i can make a nice approximation for hair, but i dont like the strand look, i was planning on instead making a low amount of particles and have the strands instead be replace by hair strand objjects i made instead. ive had a lil bit of experience with dupliverts, but it seems to be different for hair-type particles.

my question is thus: how do i replace the strand/path hair particles with an object? ive tried changing from path to object, or even group, in the visualisations part the particle system but the objects wont follow the path shape… why is that?

thanks in advance guys.