To the guys that might know, or might remember, I was wondering.

Was the original urethane blue Nitro from Ebonite anywhere near comparable to the original urethane blue Hammer solid?

I have them both available to me, but the Hammer is going to cost me a bit to get it going, and I already have the Nitro ready to throw. Don't really want to spend money duplicating something I already have access to.

I used the old Hammers a lot back then, but never had the chance to use a Nitro, and never got a chance to compare them side by side.

For me, the blue hammer started up later then the nitro. I personally liked the hammer over the nitro unless if there was more oil.  My nitro was sitting in the bag instead of being on the lanes. The hammer also hit a lot better too. This is from recollection since I got rid of these many many years ago.

 No problem, I understand.  I used the Hammers a lot myself, just never used a Nitro.

 I did use a Turbo however, and I remember that the Nitro was supposed to be "cleaner and stronger" than the Turbo. Never used it while using the blue hammer though.

 For me, the Turbo was a little stronger than a black hammer, that's what got me wondering about the Nitro and the blue hammer.

 I have used urethane a lot this season, but the new machine they just got is putting out more volume than before. Was hoping I could just go to a stronger urethane and finish out the year.

They were very comparable in their time.  I doubt if you'd see much difference at all now except the cover on the Hammer will be a little easier to work with.  E balls at that time were like Udots in that once you touched them they were never the same.

I doubt either of these will be strong enough if the volume is too much for the balls you've been using.  What we saw as a large difference back then won't be much now.

I doubt you'll see any discernable differnce on today's oil/patterns.

I've still got a Blue Hammer, Vector One, and Black Enforcer.  The Enforcer is the strongest, but they're all within a 2-3 board range of each other and that's probably because of surface differences.

Both balls were very comparable with the same surface prep.  The blue Hammer came at about 400 grit from the factory.  Strongest shell out at that time due to surface prep.  Not sure what the factory finish was on Nitro.  Also, there was more difference from batch to batch on balls back then than people remember.  Some blue Hammers retained their powder blue hue for hundreds of games, while other soaked up lane oil and turned more of a blue green pretty quickly.  I had 3 blue hammers, and the first one was by far the best of the bunch. 

There are still big differences from batch to batch, but not many people drill 3 or 4 of the same ball anymore.

Still have my Nitro...was my go to ball back in the day...loved it!