First of all, great testing Todd...
And yes, in german detailing shops foam pads/wool pads are much more common than microfiber.
In addition lots of detailers over here seem to prefer harder foam pads even with the finishing polishes like sf4000 (probably due to hard paints used by german car companies), which was also measured and verified by and at Menzerna with BYK-Gardner gloss measurement instruments in a test done by detailers of the german detailing forum Autopflegeforum.eu.
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