Dead flat bases, beautiful structure, more than 2 and less than 3 side bevel. All good.
However, the base bevel was a very racy 0.5. I put that at 1.0 and the skis were a lot better, but still not "me".
That is a superb and concise explanation of how I feel about the Dissenter!
Could just be me. I love to carve, but have no history with modern GS race skis.
Geez. Well, diversity of experience and preference is a good thing, right?
I was struck by both your sentence about the racy .5 base bevel and the one at the end, of "no history with modern GS race skis."
Maybe these skis prefer someone with at least a modest gs race background, again not sure.
On groomers, but maybe also elsewhere, I would usually prefer a 0.5 base bevel on a strong front side or race ski, when I can get that: more immediacy of response.
I had more than fifty years of skiing GS skis with a 0 base bevel - flat with a right angle. Like riding a bike, that sort of ski feels like coming home to me, even if I'm a bit clumsy athletically at times, dunno. And the skis/bindings are so much better now than they were back when.
I ski and own a half dozen GS race skis (and four FIS SL skis I love also): 2 old spec 183/23, three current U18 and women's 188/30 (favorite skis I take out a lot of days), and a pair of non-FIS Master's GS skis 185/23, I believe (another favorite that gets a lot of use). At this point, those all just feel almost perfect and dialed in to me, skied recreationally, safe like a bicycle, almost; so it's different for me with the Dissenter 78s. They are on a par or if anything with a somewhat higher safety and versatility margin, for me. Once I use even some race technique on them, they feel for me just dialed in comfortable; not dangerous. Just the best of a usual sort of ski day.
At one point skiing today, for example, I was going down a steep slope usually reserved for steep GS or SG race training. It had swirls of hardened drift at various stages of compaction, large, skied off boiler plate ice patches, fairly poor visibility, swirled areas of drifted pure powder, and I was on those 78s, dialed in. At one point at least I threw them totally sideways at speed, then returned to the fall line back and forth when I saw a good line. Those skis made all that just about like perfect corduroy, with some extra great ride from the powder here and there.
Man, such a wonder that I can still function like that, so I just felt something like being in a peak experience, or on a pure GS race ski plus some of the ease and forgiveness of something like those Line Blades, just such easy back and forth turns at speed, like a child's fun playground game. At that point, very safe, given my odd gs ski background, I guess. Pig heaven.
So, dang, not great that you were having an almost opposite experience so recently.