After hearing all the stories and hype about the backend of this ball, I decided to pick one up. I made a trade for an almost brand new 15lb-er. I plugged up the thumb and redrilled it. Layout was stacked with mass bias just right of thumb & a small weight hole on axis.
With the matte factory surface, this ball seemed to "float" through the heads and had a strong arcing backend.... as expected from a matte finish on a normal house shot.
In an effort to find the "angular" backend that I had heard about, I hit the ball with some ebonite particle polish. I will admit that it made the ball look pretty (although I always prefer gloss over matte finish). Unfortunately this polishing seemed to take away any reaction the ball had. Now the nice "float" through the heads continued 45 ft down the lane. Backend was weak at best. I expected more backend by polishing... and ended up with less.
The only other ball I have ever experienced this with was the Ebonite TPC player. Matte finish seemed to work wonders, polishing killed all reaction. As a result, I conclude that my polished Unleashed belongs in a petting zoo
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S^2
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The Bengals season has come to an end. Achieved the .500 mark, so all was not lost. Now we look forward to April... Come on Chris Gamble