Yeah, you have to hit those high-end balls with surface every few games to keep the cover truly fresh. The coverstocks on most of those balls lane-shine so fast that if you want/need to keep surface on them it's a fairly frequent maintenance issue.

As for what to use it's all up to you. There's lots of options out there Abralon, Siaair, and TruCut are probably the most popular. It's more of a trial-and-error kind of thing to figure out what works best for you.

I like the Mirka Mirlon pads myself. That's what the Turbo SandBagger was designed to use and that's the tool I started surface maintenance with. They come in 360, 800, 1500, and 2500 grit options. I'm not exactly sure how they compare to the other options since they are fairly different but my guess is  the 1500 grit Mirlon pad would not be similar to the 1500 grit TruCut pad. Probably comes out as a higher/less abrasive result due to being a much looser type of weave.

My PSO indicated that when he does plug work on a ball, he always resurfaces the ball as part of the final step of the process to make sure the finish is even all the way around.  He always warns customers that the ball may seem to hook less, or go longer, at first.  Once it has a handful of games on it and gets a track back on it, the reaction should return to what it was before the plug work.

That being said, with my high end solids I rarely ever hit them with a pad.  I just clean them immediately after every session and that keeps them reacting great.  Really, the only time I use abralon or siaair is when I am trying a completely different surface on a ball.  Otherwise, I just clean and go.

There are so many possible surface variations that even when a PSO tries to guesstimate what is on the ball, they make think they are close but are not.  A shop could invest $1000 in a handheld ball surface scanner to get as close as possible, but that would be a lot of plug and/or resurface work required for the investment to pay off.

There are some people that say that when you get a brand new ball, you should lightly "break the cover" on it right away with a pad of some sort so you always know what it started with.  Then it is easier to duplicate it moving forward when you do a resurface.  You go back to box finish, then break the cover the same why you did when it was new.  Kind of makes sense, although I have never done it.