can anyone compare Falken fk-452 tires with Hankook RS-2's, Dunlop Z1's or similar?

[brokeAs240sx]

of course tires are more noticeable in the front, but that doesn't mean you can't feel the difference in the rear. Again, I state that you feel these differences at the limit on track/autox/etc. I'm not talking about daily driving.

Let's see, throttle steering through sweepers & amount of oversteer induced/controlled gassing your car out of a corner. Take it as you will, but that is from my own experimenting w/ different tire setups over just the past few events.

Fronts I've run everything from ss595, 595rs, rs-2, re01r & random other tires. I haven't run fk452's in front so I cannot tell you how they compare against anything in front, but from my limited exposure to fk452's on other ppl's cars, I've noticed that they seem about the grippyness of ss595 more or less.

The "numbness" feeling you talk about is all relative.

The only disadvantage of the OP buying Z1's are that they will wear out significantly faster than fk452 or comparable tires. For dailies, this comes into play & has to be considered as part of cost vs grip.