Just drop in to say YO and want a few hints and tips

Just drop in to say YO and want a few hints and tips

Hey
I am new in the DJ business and want to start fresh get help and help those that i can. The site looks nice and friendly. :slight_smile: Since I am 17 and woke up this year from my gaming life ( Cant belief I wasted so much years in doing nothing ) I want help getting the right equipment this year. I want to start practicing this year 2011. Next year i want to start DJing at clubs. I am already reading up what to do what i need and allot of extra details. I live in a small town and the only club we have, have a DJ that really doesn’t know what he does and pays maybe 12 $ a night or so i have heard from my ex. Anyway I want your advice on if i am going to buy the right equipment. I am shipping my equipment in from Sound Select.The reason I am buying from this site is because it seem to be the only place I can order from in South Africa. This is my equipment for the time being and I think i can reach with my pocket money.

  1. 1 x Behringer VMX200USB 2-Channel DJ Mixer for $239.850
  2. 2 x Stanton T.50 Budget Belt DriveTurntable for $ 269.7

My monthly pocket money is 60 $ and will be getting a vacation job at the 2nd end of term 2. Is this the right beginning just to see if I want to do this and did I miss something ? I am DJing at the moment on a program called Virtual DJ. Thanks alot for reading and enjoy your day :sunglasses:

there are a few south africans on here, such as sarasin, and they might be able to help you out with places to buy gear. Are you sure you want to go for a trad turntable/mixer setup? Just to warn you, cheap belt drive TTs are a bitch to learn to beatmatch on.

it all depends on what your wanting to get into. Like fullenglishpint said are you sure about the turntables? You could score a decent controller/soundcard for the budget your working with. The controller approach would allow you to continue using virtualdj as well if thats what your comfortable with and want to continue to use.

Belt driven TT’s are a NO NO…for DJing.

it’s ridiculous that pretty much every beginners’ ‘everything you need to DJ in a box’ TT setup you can buy comes with belt driven TTs. Learning to beatmatch will take much longer and be much more frustrating.

Buying second hand is usually a good idea…starting off.

pretty good practice for learning the fundamentals, not really worth the investment though. especially these days with software and controller options..

@OP, if you’re just starting out don’t waste your money on entry-level analog gear.

buy a copy of traktor pro, a modestly priced midi controller and an audio interface.
this is a digital dj forum, you’re probably going to find pretty biased opinions in favor of software&controller option - but with that said digital gear is not only more affordable to start with, but it’s also top quality and power from the get go which isn’t the case if you start off with entry level mixer and belt drive turntables.

while this is true, id say if you can beat match on those, you can do it on anything! but yeah, even cheap direct drives ones would be better

Might I suggest the VCI-300 route?
You’ll save some cash this way, not have to worry about setting up, and the full software is included. In this you get the traditional style of 2TT’s and a mixer, and won’t get side-tracked with caking FX on everything.

Thanks guys for all the reply’s. To be honest I dont know what to buy actually. I thought you just need a mixer and 2 turntables, headsets and a few vinyls so i got a good cheep set

Do some research on the VCI-300, I wish I’d bought that at first. It’s affordable, and straight to the point. It allows you to learn the fundamentals (and then some) without the headaches of mapping and unlocking software. Also, there’s minimal cable traffic, and a built-in soundcard.

Ok i will read up on it. Also a reason why i want a turntable is for scratching since I love it and looks hard to master so I want to master it while I am young and do great tricks

Vinyl seems to be the way to go, for scratching.

If you want to scratch and get good save your money and invest in a pair of cheap direct drive turntables. They’ll last a LOT longer than belt drives. Trust me, this is not something you want to skimp on.

It is!

I was sick of just playing CD’s..and wanted to get DVS…but found the VCI here and TP.
Thinking i could learn to scratch a bit etc…and DJ.

I pretty quickly realised that there is nothing like the actual vinyl and turntable feel.
Thats the original scratching.

But as the rest of the DJ thang…it has moved forward in tech…so you can scratch with a device sufficiently…but it obviously depends on you.

Ok the guys what do I need to look at if I want to buy a Nice DJ SET. I want to scratch with vinyls but load music through my laptop

Youll need a DVS system then.
The most popular are Serato and Traktor,
What this does is uses a special timecoded vinyl that runs into a soundcard and controls your mp3s on your laptop, so essentially you are running your mp3s on TT’s and a mixer.

OK thanks alot so I am not ganna but the VCI-300 anymore ?

You want digital vinyl, Traktor Scratch Pro or Serato Scratch Live. Simples.

To the OP. Havent read any responses. What I would say is I started on equipment worse then what you mentioned and i have come a long way from when I started out, and I started at your age. Use what ever you can get your hands on and learn the shit out of it. If you are hungry enough you will get where you want. The only one issue you face that I didn’t have problems with is obviously if you are using vinyl you might find it hard to get a decent collection of music together as everything is CD’s or digital download now. But dont let that put you off. You can still find all the classics guaranteed to make any dance floor rock out cheap on vinyl. Just practice your heart out mate! Glad to hear you’re not gaming any more. Sell your playstation, that shit aint gonna get you nothin out of life!