Remember, the Porter Cable Dual Action Polisher was originally introduced as a
wood sander. It was introduced to the detailing world as a paint polisher by Meguiar's in the early 1990's. The oldest Brilliant Solutions Catalog I have in my collection goes back to 1995 and it shows it in there. That was long before most of these popular discussion forums even existed, let along the online stores.
Here's some pictures of my oldest catalogs... am trying to find out if there's any older catalogs than this...
The one on the left is from 1995 and the one on the right is from 1996, the catalog from 1995 documents Meguiar's introducing the G100 at least 13 years ago and before this we were showing people in the Professional Trade how to use air powered DA Sanders to polish paint by using our W5500 Foam Polishing Pad, which if you look closely is the actual pad on the Porter Cable unit pictured below, not a W-8006 on a W64 DA Backing Plate.
Photos courtesy of MeguiarsOnline.com
The lettering is kind of fuzzy but you can make out that it says Porter Cable
With a thin piece of sanding paper attached to the backing plate the counterweight might make a difference.
With a comparatively thick foam buffing pad and especially after it becomes wet with product, it doesn't seem to make any difference.
YMMV
