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Sunday, August 28, 2011

Wobbly Center Column on Marchioni.

Gary- I have a Tiltall Professional #4602 and using your exploded parts diagram, here is my problem: When I raise the head, the center column flops back and forth slightly. This makes it hard to get any motion shots in a steady manner. There is a bushing (#024 at the top of #025) so I can easily tighten the bracket to prevent the head from "decompressing" or dropping. I do not tighten the bottom of #025 (heck the handle is long gone) but that is ok, as I want to "spin/swivel/track" the motion shot. #023 slides into #033, but it is loose at the bottom because #23 is smaller in diameter than #033. I see a couple of parts ( #034 and #035 ) that if slipped into the bottom of #033 would possibly take out the wobble, but I believe they would just slide up and down (therefore OUT of) #033 when I adjust the height. I hope you can help me resurrect this classic..it is sturdy and HIGH but this "rocking" ruins my shots..can you suggest anything? THANKS Fred

Fred- Part 034 is a strip of adhesive velcro which is installed just inside the lip/edge of Part 033 and will solve your problem as your original strip probably aged and fell out some years back. As adhesive velcro loop is available from a good sewing / fabric shop in various versions and from various manufacturers - choose the stiffest or most dense version.  Don't search too long, get whatever you can find to start with, knowing that there are other versions available on Amazon or EBay.

I did not understand from your email whether you are shooting motion with video or capturing a moving subject with a still camera - if the later - you should be good to go.  If the former, I will suggest you get that missing TEP4 handle (part 028) so that you can lock down the column and then add a small video tripod head to the top of the Tiltall tripod head - this will smooth your motion as you follow the action of the subject. Someday, you might also consider placing that video head with one of my headless columns, but let's get that wobble of your present column sorted first.  -Gary