Each step up was clearly, easily audible. I'm talking you knew in seconds- further listening definitely helped round out impressions, but that each platter was superior to the one before was immediately apparent.

Chris used a 45 rpm LP of Ellington, a track that started out simply with female vocal and sparse accompaniment, then built up with solo's on sax, muted trumpet and so on. Each time you knew it was better just listening to the vocal, as each platter fleshed out greater detail and presented a more palpably solid singer's presence in the room. Then as each instrument joined in your appreciation for the improvements only grew, as the cymbals took on greater sheen and shimmer, the trumpet greater solidity and so on. You know sax is hard to do, but by the time we got to the wood platter the balance between reedy detail and the resonant body of the horn was really clickin' in.

The kicker was at the end, when he swapped out record clamps. Chris had a brand new clamp where the delrin portion is replaced with West-resin treated cocobolo. Another huge difference, about as much (Chris says "nearly") as between say the lead-loaded acrylic and wood platters. The platter comparisons were impressive enough but everyone was blown away with the clamp demo.