This work attempts to study the vibration response of a double-row self-aligning ball bearing due to surface and localized imperfections. For the contact deformation at the ball–race interactions, the Hertzian load–deflection relation is used for the evaluation of time-varying contact stiffness. The elastohydrodynamic theory is applied to find out the central film thickness. For both the inner and outer race waviness cases, the system response is observed as periodic (with vibrations of high amplitude) at [Formula: see text], i.e. multiples of Nb and its vicinity, but gradually turns to quasi-periodic as the value of waviness order reach some intermediate value. In the case of a localized defect, the double impulse phenomenon marks the entry and exit events of the rolling element in and out of the rectangular spall. Hence, this analysis can be used as a diagnostic tool with system dynamic characteristics for distributed and localized defect identification.