DJ Equipment Basics: How to Choose the Best DJ Gear
Choosing the best DJ gear for your purposes (starting out) can be quite a hassle and sometimes very difficult if you don’t know where to start. There are turntables, mixers, headphones, speakers and many other components that you may not currently know about when beginning your hobby/career as a DJ. This basic guide will take you through some of the best DJ gear you can start out with no matter what your budget.
Step 1: Set up a budget
Before you decide on which DJ equipment to invest in when you’re first beginning, it’s always important to develop a budget. You don’t want to overspend and be left without rent money but you also want to make sure you have enough money to play with so you can pick the best DJ gear for yourself.
I would suggest taking at least $50 or so out of your paycheck at a time and set it aside. Mark it down as “DJ Equipment Money” and don’t touch it until you have anywhere from $200 – $600 to play with.
Step 2: Determine Quality vs. Flexibility
Next, before you buy, you’ll want to figure out whether it’s best to start with a quality set of equipment or something that gives you a bit more flexibility (cheap equipment).
Although I’d always recommend picking up quality equipment – since you won’t have to replace it later – you may be more interested in lower end gear because you’re just starting out. Investing hundreds of dollars into a set of equipment and then letting it collect dust doesn’t make much sense, does it? This is why you may want to go with affordable gear such as the Hercules DJ Console MK4 because you still get to play around with DJing but without the high overhead – it’s just a consideration at this point.
Step 3: Seek out the right guidance
Once you’ve determined your budget and what type of DJ equipment you’d like to pick up when beginning; take some time to ask other DJ’s, friends and music shop employees what they would personally recommend. If you don’t have access to these resources though, you could always read reviews online, talk in DJ forums or take a look around here on the blog to see my own personal reviews of products and the guides that go along with each piece of equipment.
Step 4: Assess your DJ equipment purchase
Okay, so now, we’re getting up to the point of buying the gear. Now you’ll want to browse through an online shop or two (I’d recommend the DJ equipment on Amazon) to see what kind of equipment is being offered, read some reviews, make a list and SIT on it for a while – yeah, really – sit on your list for a bit because you don’t want to make a quick purchase that you may regret at this moment.
Step 5: Choosing the best DJ gear for your needs
The final step of choosing the best DJ gear for your needs: it’s time to make a purchase.
From my own experiences, there’s three major choices at this point when you’re just beginning:
- Midi controllers – These let you hook up your gear to your computer which is great if you have a digital music collection.
- CD turntables – These are way more flexible (such as the CDJ-1000 MK3′s) because you can still hook them up to a number of devices and use CDs (new or burned).
- Traditional turntables – Technics 1210′s are the ones I have which have been really great to me; you get that old school feel and it’s fun as hell when you go crate digging.
Each of these will be dictated by your budget and needs; when you’re looking for DJ equipment at a beginner level – you’ll probably want to stick to either midi controllers or CD turntables because you have the greatest range of flexibility.
Recommended DJ Equipment for Beginners
When I first began my hobby in DJing, I jumped right into buying a high end of Technics 1210′s which, by far, has been one of the best investments to date but it also meant that I literally spent about 6 months saving up – which was a killer for me because I wanted to start right away.
I later picked up a Hercules DJ Console MK4; a midi DJ turntable setup which allowed me to hook up my gear directly to the computer and even came with a copy of Virtual DJ. This also turned out to be one of my best purchases because I could take it anywhere, it was relatively inexpensive ($170 or so) and let me play around with mixing when I didn’t want to hop on my full set of Technics.
Overall, I would recommend starting out with a piece of equipment like the Hercules DJ Console MK4 because it will give you the greatest flexibility, doesn’t cost much and you can always pass them on to a friend or resell them at a later time (they hold their value). These pieces of equipment, by far, are the best investment when you’re looking for DJ equipment for beginners.