OK I spoke to Paul Adams at Racelab who kind of knows his way around a set of suspenders....
Turns out that an awful lot of the last few posts (mainly including my own) are, unsurprisingly, complete bollox. Bjorge's first sentence was closest.
Here are some actual facts.
1) It doesn't matter whether the external force is applied at the top of the forks (courtesy of rider weight plus front brake application) or at the bottom (by the road). Because that force is going through a spring, all parts of the spring will be involved in controlling the force. Therefore it doesn't matter which way round progs go in, it makes no difference to the ride.
2) The reason Hyperpro suggest the tighter coils go at the top is because their springs taper - if you put them the wrong way round, your going to have firment issues, especially when a cartridge is in situ. That is the only reason.
3) If you fit them one up, one down (like the SV guy did) , they don't become effectively linear, but they don't function properly as progs either.
4) Obviously you can control default damping by oil weight and air gap, but this doesn't change the fact that linears are ultimately more predictable.
5) A dual rate spring is what the TDM 850 has as the OE rear shock. Kind of a halfway house between a linear and a prog.
Erm... thats it.
Edited by the969, 15 August 2019 - 04:54 pm.