First off, do you understand what the different balls on the market do? At 300+ releases a year, nobody knows them all.Every pro shop you go to will have their preference because they understand those products. It's why you see Brunswick pro shops and Ebonite pro shops and Storm pro shops for example. For example, I like to be across Storm, Roto, Brunswick, Motiv, Radical, 900 Global, Columbia, and a bit of Track and Ebonite gear. That's a lot of releases to be aware of. Often customers are asking me about a ball and I'll go look it up. (The little companies have less releases, so they're easier to be across! Whereas Storm are a pain, because it feels like they release a ball about every week, but Canberra is pretty Storm-centric.)
It's all about surface, both the material the ball is made of and how your pro shop person prepares it. Then the core, it's RG and differential, both total and intermediate, then pin to PAP distance, then MB placement or even creation via the drilling. There's a number of ways to lay all that stuff out. Starting to sound complex? That's because it is, because all these factors relate to each other and the lane surface and oiling pattern. Anybody telling you it's simple is kidding themselves. A good technician can work it out fairly quickly.
Seek and use someone who has done all the hard work. In your neck of the woods, James McGinty at Coffs Harbour is an old friend of mine, he's also good at balancing out the factors toward the reaction you're after. I've seen his work and we've spent many hours having bowling ball nerd discussions. He knows his stuff. I've heard good things about Cameron Walsh and think he's a decent fellow, but have no direct experience with his work so I can only give him a plug second hand. (Sorry Cameron!)
I simply don't know enough about the Brisbane scene to comment.
As for pin-left, right, up, down - It's all relative to your PAP (look it up): Sean Rash uses pin-left layouts almost exclusively. It gets his ball down the lane and keeps it alive longer. I use pin centre and pin left for the same reasons. If I were on Brunswick Staff, I'd use more pin left like Sean to extend the early rolling nature of a lot of their gear into that really useful "continuous rainbow" shape on the backend. In contrast, Jason Belmonte doesn't use these layouts, as his track diameter is very, very large, (giving him a longer PAP to grip centre distance) so this kind of layout would come close to reverse flaring (rumble, rumble, pancake hit) and Storm gear pushes further downlane anyway. Mike Fagan, with a small track diameter (and shorter PAP to grip centre distance) and the in between reaction nature of Track (predominantly asymmetric) gear, uses longer pin to PAP layouts for the same reason Sean Rash does. One last note - Pin up can make a ball go longer, it can also make the ball respond faster to friction and hook more; providing it responds to friction in the first place. Again, it's all relative.
So find someone who can measure your PAP and lay stuff out accordingly. Like I say on my site; Anything less is guesswork.
