Cinetronic Rods and PRO sleds - eliminating vibration

[Tom Wills]

I just got in my new Cinetronic monitor rods Friday, for a shoot I'm heading out on tomorrow. First of all, I want to say that it is beautifully machined, rock solid, and once I swapped out the clamping bolts for Kipp handles, it's pretty much the perfect monitor rod setup for me.

 

However, when I installed it, I got some wicked low-frequency vibrations coming through my monitor. I've fought monitor rod vibrations before, and I checked all the usual places - the mounting of the yoke to the rods, the rods themselves, the clamps, and I eventually found the issue - the plastic sleeve on the PRO post that brings the lower section to 1.5". Chris from Cinetronic offered me a smaller post insert for the rods that would have allowed me to avoid that plastic sleeve, but I wanted the versatility of being able to move the rods up to the main post, should I ever want to.

 

I did find a solution, after a lot of trial-and-error troubleshooting. Basically, if I aligned the cut in the plastic sleeve to either side, the whole rod and clamp setup became a diving board. By aligning the cut in the sleeve towards the back, however, it became rock solid.

 

I've attached a (crappy iPhone) picture of how I aligned it to remove the vibration. (ignore the dust... man, the flash on the iPhone does terrible things)

 

Hopefully this saves somebody else the troubleshooting that I went through upon getting their rods. I'd love to hear if anyone else with a PRO and the Cinetronic monitor bracket had vibrations from the same issue too. Now that I've got it sorted out though, I couldn't be happier. Gotta love that pan inertia!

[Tom Wills]

Here are some better pictures of how the plastic sleeve needs to be aligned relative to the Cinetronic rods, now that I'm back from the job.

 

I've also done some more investigation, and it appears it's not just where the slit on the sleeve is located, but where the clamp is located on the sleeve. The clamp being in the middle of the sleeve, as shown, is much more stable than being on either end.

 

Spending hours tapping the rig all over from top to bottom and fixing anything that vibrates - now that's how to spend a Tuesday! Gah, somebody get me a drink.

[Osvaldo Silvera SOC]

Thanks for posting