the “why do people judge” thread got me thinking of this…
I’ve used an S4/VCI-100/M-Audio(forget the 2 chan controller) Numark Axis-9 CDJ’s/Vestax VCI-400 and of course expensive Pio CDJ’s I can’t afford.
the one I ALWAYS go back to is my trustee Numark Mixdeck.
I kid you not, it’s been the best controller I’ve used even when compared to the highdollared CDJ’s and fancier controllers.
the mixdeck, even if in a plastic encassement has been the toughest I’ve owned.
I come from a vinyl mixing background, and I never got used to the miniature jogwheels the newer controllers have.
Numark stuck it out with larger jogwheels on the quad/mixdeck..good on them
Don’t hear much about these controllers, but I thought i’d throw my hat in the ring that it’s certainly not one to be overlooked.
I’m gonna stick my neck out here and say BCD3000. I’ve abused the hell out of mine over the few years I’ve had it, I got it as b-stock in not the best condition for £50, and it was a bit haggard when I got it. It’s still going fine, the only problem is the drivers aren’t updated any more so on modern systems it’s performance isn’t ideal. It feels like absolute **** and the jogs are hideous, but it’s never let me down. I’ve used a plethora of terrible denon controllers, a garish pink vci-300 that’s only redeeming feature was the jog wheels (Vestax know how to make jogs!) and I regularly use 2000 nexuses, which obviously play like a dream, but without my beloved Traktor functionality I just feel hindered.
So yeah, this is my nod to the BCD3000, soon to be replaced by the studio 4a (which looks pretty damn unbelievable for the price point), for getting me from A to B!
Korg nanokontrol!
I mapped every control on that thing, in all four banks. It’s small, and dirty cheap, and not very durable, but it packs a lot of controls into one tiny unit.
I have to give a bigs thumbs up to the much underated Icon Istage, 48 assignable Led pads/buttons, and thats just on one view, you can scroll down for hundreds of asiignable buttons. I have at last count 96 buttons assigned to it, and using modifiers can just press a button to change the whole group of controls at hand. Fantastic bit of gear, only downside is that I can only assign 2 colors to the buttns. Im just waiting for Traktor to release the Remix decks Midi controls as the icon will be great for it. Plus its Cheap and pretty rugged. Love it!!
I will put original Hercules RMX out there, because it’s built quite solid and does it’s job perfectly (not the greatest jog wheels of course). Maybe it’s just my nostalgia for first controller but I liked the hell out of it.
+1 ridiculously well built unit, Like a Sherman tank, heavy as fuck and lacking in knobs, the buttons were a bit on the heavy side. But it felt like a real mixer under the hood and there wasn’t much you could not do with it so long as you didn’t need touch sensitive wheels.
Hercules were the first of All-in-one midi controllers way back in 2004 I belive it was, with the DJ console mk1, they deserve a big thumbs up for paving the way to where controllers are today.
The x session pro was my first controller and I still have it. Very handy for plug and play with ipad.
Twitch is great too but without timecode I find it lacking. A couple of pl-1s alongside it would be very interesting.
Reloop Contour from here again(I sound like a fanboy already, gosh)
I mean, It’s a decend, rough, solid modular controller, but oone seems to notice it, but everyone notices the Behringer equalient, which doesn’t look right. + it has a great sounding 5 channel stereo soundcard
So if you raise the unit a little, it fits perfectly next to a bigger 4-channel club mixer and it would look in place, you wouldn’t consider this a toy.
My goal is to get another one, so I have only take 2x small modulars, laptop, headphones to the club and use the club mixer without cluttering the DJ-booth with a big controller
for this oldtimer! It was damn good that Beri never updated it to 4k. Studio 4A looks nice but BCD layout was something unique.