You do need a good fluid head to get a decent pan. Most of the problems I have seen with pans and a bad tripod is that first jerk and and stop. That and inconsistent timing. I’m not a big fan of long pans – so if you do have one, try starting out earlier and ending later so that you have the entire pan in movement. Then in post, you transition to and from the pan while it is always moving. The user would never see the "start" and end of the pan.
(Make sense?)
I haven’t tried it, but a cheap alternative is instead of a tripod, try setting your camera on a bean bag on a lazy susan, then slowly rotate the lazy susan.
