I was never a Lane #1; I don't have any burning reasons for that. I just wasn't drawn to them.
I would love for there to be another manufacturer of bowling balls that is independent of Brunswick and Storm; but is the Lane #1 name/brand something that has enough equity or value to be worth the effort?
Probably, but it gets less every day with the passage of time. If someone is going to capitalize on what name recognition remains, it needs to be done in the next 5 years, tops, IMO.
As for the equipment, if you liked strong midlane roll, the equipment was a great matchup. If you wanted go long and then hook out of the building, there were probably better options. It is very true, IMO, that the balls were at their peak when Brunswick was pouring them. Columbia 300 took over from Brunswick, then 900 Global when the San Antonio plant was sold off in the original EBI mergers. There are a handful of balls out of San Antonio that I loved, including the most angular Lane #1 I ever had, the Supernova XP.
Lane #1 had some issues of personality, I think it's fair to say, between ownership and various parties. As for the technical merits of the equipment itself, the original Diamond core did its job, but by now everyone knows there was no real "magic" to it (or any other core, especially anything with a fairly basic shape/configuration). That's not to say it can't perform a role; more than one company has a core with a basic double-right-cone shape as part of its construction, and when the core and cover make for a good marriage, even simple shapes can deliver big results.
The Bomb core, for me, was a different matter entirely, much more hit-or-miss. The big problem here is that Lane #1 basically had the Diamond and the Bomb cores, and everything was more or less a varietal of one of those two shapes. So if you didn't match up to those cores, you were out of luck.
And finally, the other shortcoming of Lane #1 was the lack of development of really unique asymmetrical cores. Most of their first asyms were derived from existing symmetrical cores, either by cutting a piece off one side and affixing it to the other, or that "warped" core that was in the original G-Force balls (and was pretty terrible for me). I think that's when the economy of scale took over, and Lane #1 lacked the funds to do advanced R&D, whereas Storm and the others were already using computers to great effect in core design.
Having said all that, Lane #1 was way ahead of its time in getting real cores into a plastic ball (XXXL Starburst) and urethane (The Liberator) at a time when most companies would only stick a pancake block in anything not made with reactive resin. The result there was even guys who would make fun of Lane #1 relentlessly quietly had XXXLs and Liberators stashed in their bags. The Liberator is a top-five urethane ball of all time.
