I've had no problems losing reaction with any of my Storm/Roto equipment. I'm still getting plenty of reaction out of my Cell and Gravity Shift that both probably have somewhere around 200 games on them. However, I also never, ever, ever throw my stuff straight out of the box, no matter what company, because I know there's no way I'm going to recreate that finish ever again. You say that you hit it with an abralon pad to get rid of lane shine. Did you just hit it straight with a 2000 pad and that's it? If so, you probably aren't really keeping the out of box finish, so it is going to react a little differently. Try sanding it with a fresh 320 pad, then lightly hit it with 500, then lightly hit it with 2000. That should get you closest to the out of box finish. Otherwise, you might try using different surfaces to create different looks. I know the Mutant Cell for me is very particular about the surface I use on it. I couldn't throw it at all at 2000 -- it hit like a marshmallow from burning up if I so much as touched any friction before the backend. I ended up going straight from 500 to 4000, then polishing it, but it was a touch too long, so I took a 600 grit pad (one of Valentino's, hence the odd grit number) and very very very lightly scuffed the ball by hand to break some of the polish, and the ball finally came to life. And even then I still can only use it for about one game before it starts burning up in the heads. It absolutely is not a good house shot ball with the drill I used on it. However, when I've gotten to use it on flatter, longer patterns, it's been awesome and still carries well.
