The ball: 15 pounds, 3.5-inch pin
The drill: "Double Thumb"-style drilling, pin over bridge, CG straight below ring finger, MB marker just to the right of the thumb. 1-inch weight hole drilled adjacent to the thumb in thumb-positive quadrant 2 inches. Works out to a 4.5 x 4 x 3.5 (pin/CG/MB) drill for me. Surface is 2000 Abralon plus Reaction Plus.
Me: PAP 4 over 3/8 up, tweener revs, good speed, high axis rotation and low tilt
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After having good success with a Break S75 and watching others have good success with the Break Pearl, I decided to try this ball. I bought a low-mileage model used off a BallReviews member. That person was left-handed, so after plugging the ball I pretty much had a "fresh" area to lay it out.
I chose a Double Thumb-style layout. The previous owner's weight hole became my thumb hole and his old thumb hole was plugged and then redrilled as a larger-sized weight hole. Shifting the fingers over gave me a pretty typical pin-over-bridge layout with the CG inside the grip triangle and the MB drilled out. I then did a full resurface on the ball, getting it to 2000 Abralon plus Reaction Plus polish.
Testing next to the S75 gave me a good reference point for this ball's performance. The first thing I noticed was that this ball, with this drill pattern, isn't as angular as one might think. It is instead a very strong ball over all, with a good midlane read, a powerful move and good drive through the pocket. It manages the breakpoint well, much better than expected from a pearl.
The cover at 2000 plus polish allows it to get a good push through the heads, but the strong MB drilling still makes the ball flip over fairly soon in its roll. When the ball transitions, it does so rather quickly, then the movement of the ball seems to "catch up" to the transition it just made.
In total look, the ball reminds me a great deal of Storm's X-Factor: You can play with it when there's more oil out there that other balls can handle, and the backend reaction, while strong, is not uncontrollable.
I was, perhaps, looking for a bit more of a snap at the back, and I was also looking for a little bit more of a gap between this ball and the S75. This ball is simply stronger than you might think, looking at the surface. This is one of the best cores to come down the line, from any ball manufacturer, in some time.
In all, this is a great ball for mediums and could be tweaked, drilling- and cover-wise, to fit just about anyone.
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The good: Tunable cover, great core dynamics that inspire controllability, probably one of the five nicest looking balls of the last decade.
The bad: Not an angular monster at the breakpoint, unexpected strength could be too much for some users.
Overall: A good benchmark pearl for mediums that is usable on a wide range of patterns due to its roll characteristics.
Jess
