Originally Posted by mleskovar

No hate :-) Sometimes it's very frustrating explaining things on the internet and understanding what others are saying. And that works both ways. I'm no expert and have been wrong many times. I no longer use the stock pads, couldn't stand the dust and short life (but the 'feel' was excellent, hot or cold). But my original MB pads wore evenly and I do remember the cutouts because the after market pads I installed did not have them. Maybe the witness marks you saw within the cutout were caused by pad dust buildup and then being compressed? If the piston is forcing the pad to **** and apply more pressure against the inner part of the rotor like you think then what about the pad on the other side? There's no cutout there. If the caliper were being cocked then the opposite would happen to that pad....more pressure on the outside of the rotor.There's enough piston to shim contact to evenly distribute the force and disc brakes rely on evenly distributed pressure across the face of the pad to work correctly. Otherwise you'd have temperature variations across the pads and rotors and the stopping power would be seriously compromised.