Pardon my ignorance, but are those discs textured?
Just getting back into DG after a lengthy layoff and I am not familiar with Latitude 64 as a company or its products. Looking at their website, they seem to have adopted the same flight rating profiles of Innova (or maybe they created the system and Innova followed, not sure) and was wondering if they are an Innova "friendly" company like Milenium or do they do their own molds and production?
Tried a search and this was the only thread that popped up in the equipment section under "Latitude 64".
Latitude 64 is a Swedish company that has been around for numerous years but only really took off in the last two to three because of their Opto Striker. They also got in one of the top European players Jasper Lundmark and asked him to be involved with the disc production process every step of the way from design to quality control. That is a lot more involved than any other pro. I do not look down on Ken Climo, Nate Doss, Dave Fieldberg, and so and so who are pros who lend their names to discs, but Jasper really deserves a lot of credit for all the work he put in at Latitude (at least that is the story I have been told).
The thing with most Latitude discs are that they are designed for glide. A few like the Halo, Blitz, Trident, and XXX can take some power, but most rely more on snap than forward arm speed. The River, Bolt, and Flow are excellent examples of how glide is more important than power. Even the Pain, a midrange and one of only a few overstable discs in their entire line-up, has tremendous glide. Only the Trident and XXX throw like bricks.
As you can see by the pictures, their Gold Line plastics can be quite the eye candy. The newer generation of Gold Line does look textured in pictures, but in reality it is the swirls and whatnot within the plastic that gives it that look. They are quite slick, maybe even more so than Star and ESP, which are the closest comparisons. However, both Opto and Gold Line with only an exception here and there are tremendously more durable than Star or ESP. Opto is as close to indestructible as a disc can be. Also, their runs have been incredibly consistent. The only problems I have heard of is that First Run Strikers are understable (almost like Innova's Champion Beast) while newer runs are more like a Wraiths. Also, really light Rivers are like Leopards while heavier ones are closer to beat TeeBirds. Beyond that, you can be fairly confident that if you need to replace a Latitude disc that you can go to the shelf and find one that will fly how you expect it.
Finally, Latitude is not affiliated with Innova in anyway. I believe most companies are switching over to a four rating system to make it easier to compare their discs to other companies. This is the best way to get their discs known and tried out by someone who is just browsing and happens to walk by a Lat disc and wonders what how it flies like. The only difference you would really see is that the Lat system goes up to Speed 14 while Innova is still stuck on 13. Everything else is pretty much comparible.
Latitude does have a partnership with Westside Discs, a Finnish Disc Golf company. Since they are molded at the Latitude plant, you will see that WS's Tournament plastic is the same as Gold Line, and their VIP is the same as Opto. Westside's line-up is currently a little more limited, but what they do have nicely fills in the gaps that Latitude has. The Boatman is very much like a Predator and the Sword is a straighter version of the Halo, closer to a Z Nuke than the Halo is, and I have not even had a chance to throw the King yet but supposedly it is the "fastest" legal disc on the market.
It is not like Discmania's partnership with Innova where Discmania's discs are molded here to make it easier to distribute in the states. Everything is done in Sweden, which means stores like GGGT have a tough time keeping popular Latitude discs in stock because of the transit time. Customs unfortunately do not put a high priority in pushing discs through.
