I just drilled as SD-73 last week and have maybe four games on it.  I read all the reviews and after drilling my friends, Jeff Bedard if Roger is reading, drilled it pretty much a label drilling, pin at 3 1/2" and CG at 4 1/2" as my PAP is 5 1/2" over, 1/2" up.  That game it an ounce of side weight and a little more finger then thumb weight, so it didn't need a weighthole.  So, after seeing how much my friends flared, I expected the same.  It sure did, I never saw a ball flare almost the entire ball as this one does, but it never did seem to grab the lane as I thought.  We bowl on Synthetics with a 38' Top Hat house shot with probably 50 units in the middle.  Now I know that alot of todays balls need the shell to break in before they really start to shine, but I was wondering if anyone else had these issues with their SD-73 out of the box?  What we did with Jeff's is cut it down to 1000 grit, but dry, not wet sand and the ball jumped to life.  I'm going to do that with my SD-73, in fact thats my surface treatment with my Epic and Battle.  I know the Epic was fantastic right out of the box with its 800 grit machine sanded finish, just wondering why the change to the Abralon finish and if there were others issues with this surface.  Thanx.