As we all know the original Rapid Fire comes with a high gloss finish out of the box. The information on the Rapid Fire would lead you to believe that this ball is very much a medium kind of ball with a strong flip characteristic and is designed for clearing the front of the lane cleanly...

BUT has anybody tried using this ball with a lot of surface on higher oil volumes?

I have one with the pin above my bridge (5" for me) and no x-hole. On higher oil volumes, I can take the Rapid with about 1000 abralon finish, really cable on it and get the thing to hook back from much farther to the right than anyone is able to play the lanes. IMHO the ball really comes alive when the surface is scuffed but I almost never see anybody else using it in this way.

So my question - has anybody tried really scuffing their Rapid Fire and if so how were the results? I would recommend people giving this a try if they are struggling to get their Rapid to fit a niche or if they are struggling on the slicker patterns.

I have my Rapid Fire sitting at 2000 abralon, no polish, used it at the USBC nationals and all the side tournaments and faired very well with it.  I think the ball is much more user friendly with the surface at 2000 than out of box, gets rid of some of the over/under on most conditions.
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My teammate had a nice look on Shark with his at 1000.  It opened up the pattern and then he moved to his Cell at box finish.

I haven't changed the surface of my Rapid yet.  For me it already handles the heavier med patterns OOB and that is where I want it.


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My Rapid Fire is also at 2000 grit Abralon. Oob it was to flippy for me and I had problems controlling it.

Now the RF is much smoother and I have more margin for error. Still it has good lenght and a good reaction to the dry. Because it's dull now and releases its power more evenly the ball is more continuous(no rollouts).

What I notice is that the ball seems to slow down quit a bit. I think this is because of R2S being a very soft material. I can make a noticeable scratch just with my vingernail.

I can imagine that the RF is a ball, which people can struggle with in the polished finish. If so, surface change can do a lot of good for you.

I thought of building an arsenal with this line, but I'm a little worried about the Pearl. Maybe a bit to much skid / snap for me.
Then again I await the particle / pearl version. My pyro is the reason I bought the RF the first day. The Pyro is much easier to control and predict, while it's polished as well.