Setting the max frontal distance and max rear distance to 0.01-.02 in the baking menu will clear up most of the artifacts, except where rings are almost touching.
@thomasp brill! many thanks! (yep Kaiser era - there's this movie I watched for this purpose - ' the Exception' hah!), I hope I won't get the outfit wrong..
Except that AMD will announce their new lineup in ten days and the 3950x will be replaced by something faster that costs the same Today is not the day to buy a cpu