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The new Romys came in last night, mounted them up by hand, no lever (with insert in the rear too!). Set the bead with a normal floor pump as well, no tank or compressor. First ride on them this morning, 2.5 Soft front, 2.4 Medium rear. 26 PSI, which felt much more stiff with the thumb test. The knobs and lugs look about the same size as a DHRII, but these roll noticably faster (at least at 26 PSI). The same benefits I found on my ebike with Radial Albert + MM: Much, much slower rebound. You can feel it...

Older stock, I've had maybe a half dozen Usoft Alberts and all of them were produced in '25. Same for my Soft compound Alberts, both Trail and V1 Gravity casings.

My two cents on anti-rise... First and foremost, it depends on the trails you are riding. There isn't a universal value that's best on everything. Low angle trails, especially one's where you're trailing the brakes to maintain speed, favor low anti-rise. On the other hand, steep trails and/or trails where you're hard on the brakes favor higher anti-rise. Sure low anti-rise can make for more active suspension, but it's impossible for your suspension to be active at all when it's fully extended. Having the rear go to full extension also really messes up geo usually when you're in a scenario...

My long term plan is to keep practicing with them on my enduro bike - figure a bit more efficiency can't hurt, and I do less on it than the ebike. I'm still not great at them but getting better. I definitely took them off for a trip to Northstar and ran flats for that, and would for sure take them off any time I go down to Santa Cruz to ride. I still strongly prefer flats, and if I had to pick one I'd pick flats, but I'm a believer in pushing myself to try to learn new things...

Sounds like you would be happiest with Mallets because they offer the most float. I'm duck footed and I unclip from Shimanos on the inside sometimes, even with my cleats rotated to match my neutral foot position. I've also ridden Times and Mallets, and while the Times are better in regard to accidental unclipping, the Mallets are basically impossible for me to accidentally come out of. So much so that I had to work really hard on re-learning how to come out of them on purpose, coming from SPD's.

Sounds like he and I are riding in the same conditions - the PNW isn't known to be hard on tires. If we're experiencing undercutting that quickly I doubt it's just a "bad batch".

would be handy to have some dampening when things get too dusty

This one should trigger some old heads, IYKYK

Guilty as charged.