Russ,
The 2 stage Active is something that our Forum Friend Dewherum was useing on his KTM for some time. I don't know any of the deatials but that was the first I had heard of it in use till Kaw came out with their version.
I think there may be quite a bit of merrit to the concept, and we've been looking into how to exstract the most advantage. The purpose seems to be a way to deal with the highspeed compression where you have little travel being used but the speeds are high. So it imporves the speed responce of the fork as still has good valve area control.
Marcus said something important here, and In general I think his floats are conservative, with the two stage set-up less flaot is utilazed, which makes for more consistnet area control (Really good) but material strain is increased so your not gonna be able to implament .1's against the face.
So to sum it up, Its a good idea, that is still be formated, and will be for some time I'm sure..
The flaot can be reduced for all aplications (Very good)
Material and overall stiffness coeifecnt, plus staging options are dificult, that ties back in with the first statment.
BR,
Jer