I have been throwing Rivers as my go to driver for over a year now. Only in the last week am I going to be scaling them back and concentrating more on the Teebird. My reasoning being that since I backhanded a tree at full force two months ago, I cannot get consistent snap. When my wrist fails to fire, my grip overcompensates and either griplocks enough where I send the disc high and the right or I wrist roll the disc into an unintended anhyzer shooting it straight out to the right. The Teebird is just a tad less nose sensitive and a little more resistent to wrist roll than the River.
Here is how it affects the River:
When I get the snap right as well as the nose angle and release point, the River is the straightest disc I have ever thrown. No fade and no turn from straight to finish and it does not take a tremendous amount of power to do so. It is the ultimate fairway driver. I have shown this picture before, but this is my 177g Gold Line River at Blue Ribbon Pines. I nailed it perfectly, putting me on the left side of the fairway and at least giving me a legitimate shot at a 2. It landed about where that guy is on the left. This throw was a day before I backhanded the tree.
However, since I developed that technique flaw two months ago, I find the harder I try to hit a tight fairway or want to make a perfect placement, the less likely I am able to do it. I have been wrist rolling the River a lot. The River is hard to flip but easy to turn. So trying to compensate for my sudden inconsistencies by hyzer flipping the River is hit or miss at best. Yet since it is easy to turn, it is very hard for it to come out of a wrist roll.
Also, while I would not call the River nose sensitive, because of its tremendous glide if it does have a nose up attitude, it does like to climb upwards. This was fatal during last weekend's B tier. When I wanted nice and easy placement down tight fairways or lines, sometimes it would just climb and nail those low hanging branches.
I am going to keep the Rivers in the bag, they are just too awesome for me to give up on because of my sudden inadequecies, but for the time being I am getting far better results from newer/ less beat Star Teebirds.
As for ratings. I agree that light Gold Lines are very Leopard-like while heavy Gold Lines are closer to very beat light TeeBirds. My Optos have had a wide variety of stabilities. Most seem to be a touch more HSS but more finicky LSS. When underpowered they seem to have more LSS but once you exceed a certain power and speed, they actually seem to have less LSS than Gold Line. Yet during the winter, these variations in stability seem to settle down and the Optos actually become more Gold Line like while the Gold Lines become rather difficult to grip because of how slick GL becomes when wet.
