Since the initial announcement of the ball I haven't heard or seen anything about this ball. Does anyone have any additional first hand experience with the Hammer Bad Ass? Comparison videos on YouTube can only show so much.

My wife is more than likely going to get me a new ball for Christmas and this is one of the balls that is on my radar if I can get some solid significant information on it.

Thanks.

The reality is that the name has caused a lot of stir, it was banned from high school competition in our state at least late last week actually, but it's honestly not that impressive of a ball.  It's not a bad ball by any means, but it's like they didn't have any ideas and just phoned this one in.  It's an extremely boring ball that doesn't manage to find its way into anyone's bag because in that reaction range, you most likely have something that does what it does better.  If you have anything in the Blood or Absolut lines, you have a similar hook potential and most likely a more favorable reaction shape.  I've drilled quite a few actually and nobody really likes them.  Had one guy throw it 5 frames and sell it.  I keep getting them in to plug and redrill because people have not liked them and sold them. 

I have a seen a few in action at a PBA regional at an ABT stop in my area. From what I saw, the ball looked decent on tougher patterns. It has a fairly good midlane read, and the backend seemed strong, yet controllable. On those tighter patterns, the bowlers using the BA were able to really control the pocket nicely, and the hitting power was quite good.

Obviously, that is a very small sample size to go from, so take that with a grain of salt. Could the issues also be that the BA is not a good house shot ball? I think that there are very few bad bowling balls anymore; it's just a matter of bad matchups between bowler, ball, and conditions. However, I do believe that there are some balls that just aren't good for wide-open house patterns. Maybe the BA is one of those. My IQ Tour is that way for me. I love the ball as much as anything in my bag when the lanes are tough, but when they're wide open and it's time to let it rip, the IQ Tour is all wrong for me.

Maybe that's the case with the BA, or maybe people had really inflated expectations based upon the marketing and the price point. In any event, as far as the original poster's question, here is what I'd say. Unless you can find a lot more info on the BA, I'd consider switching gears. There are some balls that only look good when 1-2 people throw them, and then there are balls that seem to look good and score well no matter who is throwing them. I would always lean toward the latter if you're unsure.

I have one, I won it over on bowlingboards.com.

I haven't used it much about 6 games, so can't give a real in depth review of it.

What I have seen so far was:

1-For a symmetrical core it was more angular than my other ones (Dude & Beatdown).

2-I had to play farther inside than I normally do with it. I usually start around 2nd arrow, but with the BA I had to start around 3rd arrow. Usually if I moved inside with my low rev's I had a hard time getting the ball to turn the corner. But with the BA I could get it back from the outside easier.



The thing I'm looking at is surface, I think it really needs to match up right with the conditions.

The first 3 games I used it using the OOB and was on a afternoon open bowling whatever is there conditions. There was some oil inside and the backend had some carrydown IMO.

The midlane read was okay, The backend strong and fairly controllable. The ball really mixed the pins well.

The next 3 games was on a fresh league shot basic 10 to 10 THS. I had the feeling it needed some surface here. It seemed a little over/under and needed some surface to give it a little more control.

I changed surface to 500/2000 for the next time on league, but the lanes were drier and it was too much to really use on that shot so bagged it.

I made a minor adjustment though and went to 500/2000/4000. To see if I could split the difference between OOB & 500/2000. Will get to try it tomorrow.

I just wonder whether or not the BA provides the reaction that hammer intended. As has already been said, most bowlers don't want benchmark reaction. To be honest, even I'm only luke warm on it because I don't need it for league, and I tend not to bowl events with long enough formats to be able to afford just staying in/around the pocket. I need to score and score right away in order to compete. As such, it's often better for me to either blow the doors of it by picking the right combination of ball/line or to crash and burn miserably while trying to find said combination because using a benchmark ball to card decent (but not good enough) games still leaves me out of the money in most cases. In any event, Hammer certainly knows that most bowlers just want the next ball that "goes long and snaps on the back end," so the fact that this one really doesn't seem to do that means they either missed on what they were trying to do, or they gave a reaction that they knew many bowlers need (even if they don't want it), and they figured an edgy name and some marketing would take care of the rest in terms of drumming up sales. We'll probably never know.

I just drilled one up and threw  it Thursday night.Ball didn't overly impress me but is not a bad ball.I usually have trouble with balls over hooking but this ball seems to be a little easier to control than my cold blood or bw assassin. I can say this so far i like it much better than the deadly aim thats for sure.I need a few more games with it to find out more.It was only 109 on ebay so cant complain about price..

What I'm getting from the majority of the posts is that this ball is a benchmark ball that has a premium price when it would be more in the mid-price range and if I was interested in it I would be better served to wait until it went to a close out price on an internet vender.

Thanks for the input, this is one of the reasons I enjoy this site.