What's a good controller....

[Nephew]

Yeah you can buy them in Kit form so that would help but to be honest if you have to mod it that much it cant be right in the first place.
I dont think its a good idea. I dont know how you want to use a controller but i dont see the Monome as a DJ controller in the usual sense.

Why not get a bunch of Korg Nanos for a billionth of the price of a Monome ?

Looking to use it for Ableton, and I want to be able to launch clips and have the buttons and knobs available for each channel.

The Monome and APC40 fit the bill for being able to start and stop clips on each channel, but no knobs on the monome obviously and the APC40 doesn't have knobs dedicated for each channel.

The final goal is to not have to touch or look at the computer unless I'm loading clips, and be able to adjust everything at moments notice with out having a button to shift through "banks".

[Nephew]

I didn't realize you could buy kits from monome, will look into that

[DJPhaidon]

...but no knobs on the monome obviously and the APC40 doesn't have knobs dedicated for each channel...

The cheapest way to achieve this would be an APC40 and a few nano's, honestly.

[Karlos Santos]

@ Nephew , Right get ya. Yeah that makes sense.
What about Maschine ?