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Introduction

You may think slicing racquetballs in half and using them as vibration control devices as bit of a desperate measure. But if you're a tweaker at heart, I'm sure you (like myself) have tried much more "exotic" stuff. I decided to give this tweak a try because a number of you have written about it (or something very similar to it) and also because I read about it in a certain hi-fi magazine that actually recommends it as an inexpensive introduction to vibration control.

If you haven't read our Perspective segment, you may want to do so now as a prelude to this and all other tweaks we review.

Materials and Construction

Not being a racquetball player myself I had none of them lying around so I went out and bought some. I got mine from IKEA for a couple of simple reasons: They had toy balls that were like racquetballs for about $2 a set, three per set, and each ball was painted in two colors with a dividing line straight around the middle. So one half of the ball was one color and the other half was some other color. This all meant slicing them exactly in two halves would be easy and fairly accurate. These, conveniently painted racquet like balls were just the thing for me, I've stripped many cables with a utility knife working my way around the insulator only to find out that the incision did not line up. A utility knife was exactly what I used for this job too. With six footers in hand I could treat two components with three halves under each. Sounds good, right? Well let's see...

Racquetballs Sliced In Half