Hello! Yep, drawing quality, or line quality is almost always down to pen control and the gondola is the main method of pen control.

The easiest way to see this is just to watch the pen as it draws it's waves, you'll probably see that the pen tip trails behind the movement of the cords. The gondola will move, as the cords pull on it, but it'll tend to pivot around the pen tip, rather than directly translating cord movement into pen tip movement.

Lots of solutions to this, each one with it's pros and cons, and getting good line quality is really the "craft" of using a polargraph. Most simple way is to pull the pen in, so just the very tiniest tip of it is poking out of the gondola. This has it's own risks, and you might find that fast moves actually make the pen come off the paper entirely.

Some bold and patient souls (such as our very own kongorilla) move in the opposite direction, using a vertical surface and a gondola balanced so perfectly that the pen tip only _just_ delicately touches the paper. This makes friction very low, and that leads to the same result: Cord movements are translated accurately to pen tip movements.

Drawing speed has impact too.

A lower-friction pen-and-paper combination will help. Notice the blobs where then ink bleeds out while the pen pauses for the next command - this shows there's a wet tip and an absorbent paper, which is likely to be quite "grippy".

sn