Bassline Brine's Setup

[Bassline Brine]

The "Meat and Potatoes" of my current setup:

I got my turntables in June of this year. It's taken me just under 6 months to finish off what I wanted, and get a proper audio interface.

Here's a video of when I first got my tables, with a borrowed mixer from a friend:
[youtube]5PBq2KY32DI[/youtube]

This is when I picked up my TTM-56:
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I made this little video about a month ago (10/23/11). Have moved the entire setup into the living room, and got a table to put it all onto. A lot better than being on my small desk:
[youtube]Y0yHgXXQMBI[/youtube]



And with a little holiday spirit (and I moved the computer to the left side... just feels more natural this way):


My current gear listing:

• Technics SL-1200 MK2 (x2)
• Rane TTM-56
• 13" MacBook Pro (Early 2011)
• Serato SL1
• Sony $20 headphones I got on sale at TJMaxx
• Road Ready Individual Cases for TT's and Mixer
• Ortofon Concord Elektro Carts
• Crate full of vinyl (random stuff honestly, nothing recent)
• Milk Crate as a Laptop Stand (works perfectly)
• Logitech 5.1 Surround Sound system for Audio

[Bassline Brine]

It took me awhile to get to this point honestly.

I started seriously thinking about DJing sometime in '08. I had a couple friends who got "real" setups, and it was always fun messing about with them. One of my good friends got 1200 MK5's and Serato, and another got some Numark Tables (I'm unsure of the make) and Torq.

At the time I was gaming pretty heavy, playing WoW. I used to host a vent server (the voice chatting program), and always had a channel playing music when I was online. When my buddies got their setups, it made me think about how I could incorporate actually mixing tunes into vent, just for personal enjoyment / sharing with guildmates honestly.

I've been into EDM for a little over 10 years now, and I go to shows all the time, and have been to some big festivals as well. I've been messing about with Fruity Loops since version 4 I believe, though I've not ever come up with anything amazing. Learning how to manipulate music just seemed like a natural progression.

That's when I stumbled across DJTT and DJForums... and it all went wobbly from there.

I got really interested in Traktor initially, and was looking to buy a VCI-100SE when they were the hot shit. I had just purchased Ableton (mostly to focus more with production on). But I lost my job, and it set me back a LONG time for getting gear. I was out of work for 6 months, and while I had planned on getting something, had to pay bills back first.

I pirated Traktor to test it out (since I had experience using Serato and Torq) and I bought myself an X-Session Pro and a Korg NanoKey. I couldn't really get into mixing with that setup honestly, just didn't feel natural to me. I also absolutely hated gridding my tracks in Traktor. Not that it's hard, but it just ruined a lot of the natural fun for me.

I ditched the copy of Traktor I had, and continued to mess about with Ableton a lot more. I really love ableton, but couldn't see myself incorporating it live unless I had a lot more stems and homemade production stuff to work with. Just using it to manipulate other people's tunes just feels like overkill to me, and then again comes in the obscene amount of prep work.

I was finally able to save up about $1000 to buy a setup. I was just about to buy a set of CDJ-400's for $800 and then use the rest to get a mixer, but then a couple things happened.

My desktop PC died. I think it was the hard-drive (I had all my music backed up) but I'm not really sure. Either way, I went out and bought (financed) a Macbook Pro through the Apple store. Having a laptop opened my ideas up for using a controller or DVS rather than straight CD's, and then I hit gold on craigslist.

I got my two technics 1200 MK2 turntables for $150 for the PAIR. Now, it's not really that perfect because I brought them to the shop (Audio Lab in Harvard Square, Cambridge MA), and spent about $200 to get them fixed to working perfectly. Replaced the RCA wires, had to replace one of the tone-arms, and re-calibrated and lubed everything so that it would be working perfectly. I know if I wanted to do the work myself it would have been a lot cheaper, but as I know nothing about messing about with electronics and didn't want to fuck anything up, it was a good deal in my book.

When I went to pick them up, I also ended up getting the road ready cases for the turntables. I had to move them myself, and didn't want to get them fucked up, so that was probably about $100 each for the cases. (Note: in my calculations for buying a setup, I hadn't considered the cost for buying cases).

I borrowed a friends really old Gemini mixer for a couple weeks, and then found another deal on craigslist. I ended up picking up my Rane TTM-56 mixer for $250. It has one of the transform switches broken, but it still works fine. I still need to replace the switch, just haven't gotten around to it yet because it's not something I "need" honestly, since it's still functional. I also went out and bought a road case to match up to the TT cases, another $100 or so I think. (Might have been cheaper, I can't honestly recall).

Also of note, before I got my setup at all, last Christmas my wife got me a pair of AIAIAI TMA-1's. Over the summer, my dog chewed them to unusable bits. The ONE bloody time I left them out on my desk for whatever reason. So right now I'm using a cheap pair of Sony headphones, and hoping that Santa is nice (again) this Christmas

So my costs basically came out to:
150+200= 350 for the pair of turntables
250 for the mixer
300 for the cases (lol so damned much of my budget)
about 900 for everything, without an audio interface.

Now came the part when I started saving again for the audio interface. In retrospect I shouldn't have gotten the cases right away, but I am okay with it now. But the cases were my budget for an audio interface/software program.

Fast forward about 5 months, takes me a bit to save money:

My friend who had the Serato setup just upgraded to an SL3 from his SL1, and so I got his SL1 box him for quite cheap. (He asked me not to tell people what I got it for, so I'm honoring that lol). We're good friends though, and he knows I'll make good use of it.


That's pretty much the long and the short of it. I still need to upgrade my headphones, and I want to get some kind of a controller (thinking dicers) to help manipulate some of the functions built into Serato. I need to replace that transform switch on my mixer... but honestly, I can't say how happy I am to finally have a setup I'm really pleased with.

[Bassline Brine]

So it's a little messy at the moment, but just picked up the DZ1200's. Next up a 4 channel mixer, and most likely an SL4 box down the line.

Getting to the point where my buddies and I are going to actually be able to start throwing small parties with the amount of gear we've accumulated I'm working on the mixing side of things, and my buddy is working on the sound. Excite.

[Bassline Brine]

saved.