After I gave my SRP a bath, I decided to not put polish on it to see what kind of reation I would get out of it. I seemed to get a lil more length than normal. I actually liked the balls performance. Is this true of all pearls? No polish, more length?

In theory, polishing a ball should make it more reactive. That is, it should slide more on oil, and hook more on the dry boards.

In practice, I find that sanding a ball to Abralon 4000 to be satisfactorily equivalent to polishing the ball, but with less maintenance.

I agree with Joe on 4000. It has become my favorite surface. All of the advantages of a polished ball with less maintenance. Also, I have found that it is a little less squirty than a polished ball.

I agree, polish gets a bit inconsistent it seems, so I prefer the 4000 abralon as well.

I use polish on my equipment when I want a more scuffed surface under the polish to give the ball a little more bite on the lanes.

My Cell Pearl I went to 500 grit, just brushed over the top with 1000 lightly and then put polish on top of that. This gives me a mid lane read similar to my Cell Solid but still gives the ball slightly more length and backend so I can play the same line with both and have a different shape to the pocket.

To add to what's been said, there's different ways to make a ball go longer, or at least what you perceive to be longer. When the ball comes off your hand, you've given it a certain amount of energy. How the ball uses that energy is based on how much friction the ball sees and where on the lane is sees friction. When a ball starts to see friction, it looses some of the energy it had. So if a ball sees some friction through the oil, it's not going to have as much energy when it gets to the dry part of the lane. A ball that just skates on the oil and doesn't really have any friction with lane will have more energy left when they get to the back end and will hook harder and generally make a more sudden move. Pearl balls generally see less friction than non pearl balls, supposedly because of the mica in the cover stock giving the ball less elasticity and a smaller footprint on the lane.

Now what you could be seeing is that your ball is actually seeing more friction earlier and therefore not having as much energy left to snap as hard. It could be hooking a couple of boards in the oil and then making a slower move on the back end, opposed to not really hooking at all in the oil then then making a more violent move on the back end.

One of the problems is that there's no real golden rule as to what a ball will do. It's a combination of the coverstock on the ball, how the surface is prepared AND the condition on the lane. You're not always going to get a more tame reaction with a duller surface, and you won't always get a stronger reaction with something that stores a lot of energy, because of the condition is to oily, it will never see enough friction to hook.