A chain built to show no mercy

I could have left this as theory. Instead I took away every excuse I had, one by one, before I blamed a single record. Whatever noise was left after that could only be the pressing.

Excuse one, the turntable: a McIntosh MT5, feeding the dedicated phono stage of the C12000. Excuse two, the amplification and speakers: MC611 monoblocks into Wilson Yvettes, a chain worth over $100,000. If a defect survives that system unnoticed, it is not because the system missed it.

Excuse three, the cleaning. Every record went through the Degritter Mk II with lab-grade distilled water, with the solution and the filters changed every 20 to 30 cycles. A carbon-fibre brush before every play, and zero fingerprints on the playing surface.

With those gone, the results had nowhere else to point. Two of the four albums showed the textbook outer-to-inner pattern of non-fill, and the premium edition carried cyclical stamper defects. My chain did not cause any of it; it simply refused to hide it.

Remove the excuses first. Then the record has nowhere to hide.