I have seen some optical mouse scratch platter DIY mods and they look like a good project. I have an old ION DJ2GO that was cheap back then and pretty basic. I have an obsession with taking apart any electronic devices which is was a curse but now I've picked up some electrical skills and mainly honed them while getting into the portable turntable mods.

I have a deck that I am modding for DVS with the standard upgrades like ultra pitch and tonearm etc. The whole thing being DVS and not having any internal audio preamp etc kind of made me think about the tonearm being maybe unnecessary or the buttons that I am adding could be midi rather than just electronic motor control.

The DJ2GO is a cheap way to get two simple deck controls like play pitch etc. The jog wheel is not motorised but it will mimic basic scratching. I am not sure how the reading of the jog wheel works compared to the optical mouse hack. Without opening it up and breaking it before attempting to integrate it with a stripped out deck I thought I would ask if anyone has any idea if the controller could be modded so that the buttons of one deck could be extended and mounted around the platter and the jog wheel reader could be integrated with the platter instead of a little wheel?

The only reason I am thinking about using the ION DJ2GO would be that the PCB would be nearly as is and then the USB output would read exactly like plugging in the original but it will be just an upscaled platter rather than jog wheel and a single decks controls are mounted on top and then to switch to deck B there could be something to allow you to control two decks using the one platter but if it was just a single deck that would be cool enough for a little mod.

Am I crazy and stupidly going to ruin both devices? Or is it possible to upscale the controller? Or is it possible to do some of it and maybe need to do an optical mouse hack for the platter? Or should I just stick with the minimal DVS deck...?