That's probably a good move for you, Dave. The Solus is a high performance all-season
Touring tire, aimed at reasonably good performance over lotsa long miles (& ideally suited to returning long tire life in Aust conditions) while the Ecsta is an Ultra high performance all-season tire with a little less emphasis on the long tire life touring ability in its make-up - and besides, you tend to experience lower average ambient temps during your season ends/changes over there too, so something that warms up quickly (& might wear a tiny bit quicker as a result) means it'll be at optimum handling temps almost immediately, while I've almost always got a couple of hundred miles to get my tires up to temp even if it's sub-zero - which does happen here.... sometimes!
I chose the Solus because of its' great handling in dry or wet conditions teamed with a robust & long life non-directional touring tread pattern. If I spent more time just riding spiritedly locally with the occasional longer trip, I probably would've gone for the Ecsta or the General Altimax instead, simply for their ability to get to optimum temps quicker & the greater performance orientation those tires have vs the long life expectation from the Solus that might take a few minutes of riding to get up to optimum temps.
But hey, we can all think & talk about this stuff today to our hearts content (& Jack's disgust :sour: ) knowing there's really a vast range of suitable but different spec tires out there so that no matter what you want/need from a tire, if you make the effort to work it out & tune your pressures to suit your needs/wants, there
WILL be something that suits.... I still shudder when thinking about some of the tires I tested in the '70's - some were sticky as the proverbial on a blanket but you could watch the rubber disappear as the tire turned; while others were sooo hard that they lasted well, but you hadta ride on tippy toes & egg-shells for the first hour or more while they warmed up!! :yikes:
We might have a lot of tire threads & questions here, but we are sooo much better off today than we were back then it isn't funny!! Thank The Lord for this progress! :thumbup: