Mostly it was a feel thing, but they don’t do anything right except not fail.
Looping was always a bit of a bitch on them, to the extent that I never relied on it while mixing, which means I never used it…I used doubles instead, which also took the place of hot cues that they didn’t have. Speaking of doubles, they don’t scratch, so beat-juggling was kind of annoying…at least it was doable. I wouldn’t have wanted to scratch with that platter anyway…I had to do a slight modification to make the pitch bending less sensitive so I could actually mix on them. The mod was easy, and it worked, but the felt like crap before that, which mattered because the pitch control felt like a worthless piece of garbage compared to my 25 year old mk2s and waaay worse than my m5g. Seriously, I own several midi controllers that feel like they’re made of better components. Also, they failed on me more times than Traktor, SSL, and Ableton combined…though it only took out one deck at a time and they’re faster to restart, so that’s a plus. And, the effects sound like garbage.
And they cost like $500/each new when I got them. When I finally got rid of them, the best I could get was less than $100 for the pair in perfect condition minus some minor cosmetic scratches on the sides.
Just about the only good thing about them was that they didn’t catastrophically fail and need to be replaced over the time I had them. But while I had them, I kept buying vinyl, bought and sold SSL twice, bought FS2 and used it 'till I switched to an Intel Mac and they never caught up, switched to Ableton, and then switched to Traktor Pro without time code. I spent the entire time I owned them trying not to use them. Seriously, when I went to sell them, I hadn’t turned them on in over a year and was afraid the dust was going to cause an electrical problem. When I had to do a gig after a break from DJing, I remember looking at them, deciding “screw it” and buying SSL for the second time instead of plugging them in.
I really hated those decks.
When I bought them, they were the first affordable Pioneer CDJs in years…and I let people convince me that it was more important that they’d work in 5 or 10 years than me being the least bit happy spinning on them. It doesn’t matter if something doesn’t fail if every time you use it, you consider throwing it away. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t return them in the first week except that I was sketched out about whether my computer at the time (my last PC that was starting to have issues) could run a DVS well or not, and I kept thinking “this is where the world is going…might as well move on.”
They’re literally all that money for 2 buttons, a bad pitch encoder, and a really lousy jog wheel with a weird progressive sensitivity that doesn’t feel anything like 1000s…and no other useful features.
Frankly, the CDJ-400s scare me for the same reason. They do more, but they feel like they’re continuing the legacy of the 200, not the 1000. They feel like the same cheap components and crappy plastic instead of the amazing-feeling 1000 and 2000 series.
And I don’t even mind spending the money on gear if I have it, but based on what I’ve seen, the only CDJs worth buying are used 1000s (which I can’t find), new 2000s (which I can’t afford), or hopefully that reloop, mostly because it has the features I’d want to spin with and looks like the plastic might be nice enough to justify $500/each every year or two when they fail…and a couple people I trust said they’re impressive for what they are. But I’m not buying without at least touching them first, and no one has them. The design of the reloop is close enough to the 1000 and has a big enough platter…plus I hate the way the 400 feels…I’d buy the reloop first even for more if I were in that market just in the off chance that they don’t suck…and knowing that they probably won’t last more than 2 years while the Pioneer would easily last 5. The 400s feel like the same crap that the 200s did…at least to my hands.
I know a lot of people who love the 200, and I tend to be fairly opinionated…so take everything with a grain of salt. They did work with no real issues for several years, and they were easier to carry around than turntables and a DVS. I did some fun parties with them when I had to bring my own decks.
But, I would never buy them again and consider them the biggest gear mistake I’ve made.
