Long story short, I got out of dj’ing in “02” and had a flood in “06” which destroyed half my production gear and caused a huge mold problem which infected the remainder of my gear and my entire record collection, so it’s been over 6yrs since I made a mix

Been spending the past 2 months, cleaning records and replacing all the sleeves and jackets, cleaning and painting my studio furniture, and cleaning what gear I still had

But sadly my beloved Rane TTM-54 is ruined, so I need a new mixer, looking to spend about $1,500 max

Digital DJ’ing is past my time and as of right now I have no desire to get into it or to start playing out again (though I might start a vinyl only night later this spring), but mostly I just want something for making mixtapes and screwing around with

Ideally I’d like something with a similar build quality to the TTM-54 (rugged well-built knobs and faders, professional grade EQ’s that don’t have bleeding in between bandwidths, and an accurate line meter so I can perfectly set levels regardless if it’s a really loud white label or a really compressed track off an LP)

I’d also like some built in high quality effects, that are intuitive and easy to use, but most of all practical (who cares if something has 100 effects if over 90% of them are gimmicky junk)
but I'd rather have a good mixer than settle for something just because it has effects

And as I said I’m not really concerned with any benefits or limitations a particular mixer has in regards to cdj’s, laptop dj’s, serato, etc;



I’m wicked out of the loop so I appreciate any suggestions

Thanks