6:28
Buying gear for a younger DJ
On YouTube this video is called Do You or Your Kids Want to Buy DJ Gear?, a Few Tips.
What this lesson teaches
This one is addressed to parents, which makes it unusually practical - he is talking to somebody who will walk into a shop knowing nothing and be sold whatever is nearest the till.
The prices are from 2007. Everything else still applies.
Direct drive, once more
If it is turntables they want, direct drive. A belt is a consumable: it stretches, perishes and eventually needs replacing, and in the meantime it absorbs exactly the small hand movements that beatmatching is made of.
Package deals - two decks, a mixer and headphones in one box - existed then at around two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds for a direct-drive set, and exist now. His verdict is fair: not the best in the world, but it will get somebody started, and that is what it is for.
Keep the box
The single most valuable sentence for a parent. Whatever you buy, keep the packaging and look after the thing.
In six months or a year they will want something better. Equipment in good condition, in its original box, sells. The same equipment scuffed and loose in a bag does not, and the difference between those two outcomes is most of the cost of the upgrade.
Reading an eBay listing
Two checks, and he is right about both.
Feedback, weighed against the price. Ten feedbacks on somebody selling a pound-fifty item is fine - the downside is a pound fifty. Three feedbacks on somebody selling six hundred pounds of turntables is a different proposition entirely. He is careful not to say eBay is dangerous; the point is that the scrutiny should scale with what you stand to lose.
Postage, before you bid. He admits to having done this himself, and so has everybody: bid, win, and then discover the postage is more than the item. On DJ equipment this bites hard, because decks and speakers are heavy and awkward, and a courier prices them accordingly.
The cheap route nobody mentions
His best tip here is almost buried. Before all-in-one players, CD decks came as two units - a transport that takes the disc and a separate control panel - both rack-mountable, both second-hand for very little.
His sum: a hundred pounds for a pair of players, fifty or sixty for a mixer, a set of headphones, plugged into the hi-fi you already own. Under two hundred pounds and you are mixing. The modern equivalent is a used two-channel controller, and the logic is identical - buy the generation that has just been superseded.
On paying for the name
He makes the watch comparison: ninety-nine pence at a market stall or several thousand in a shop, and both tell the time.
He is careful, and the careful version is the correct one. Price is not quality, but it is not unrelated either. What you are usually buying at the top is durability and resale, and for somebody who may or may not still be doing this next year, neither is worth paying a premium for.
Make them compete
The last tip is one people are oddly shy about, and shops are not. Decide what you want, phone one retailer for a price, then phone another and tell them the figure you have been quoted.
They will usually beat it, even if only by a few pounds. And walk into a shop with old equipment under your arm, because most will part-exchange - his own kit has moved on that way more than once.
None of this is haggling in a bazaar. It is a competitive market and the price on the website is not always the price.
Contents of the video
0:00 A bit of a talk on buying kit
Alright folks, Jonathan here. A bit of a talk on buying kit. We're looking at the moment, it's November 2007, Christmas is coming and there's a lot of parents out there probably being hassled to death by their kids wanting DJ gear. So in a sense this is going out to you guys as well. Now first of all, if they want vinyl turntables I only recommend this but I would personally choose direct drive turntables simply because if you buy belt drive turntables You have an elastic band in there and over a period of time that will wear out. You can also get what are known as DJ packages, whereby you can buy in a box a mixer, two turntables and headphones all in one. In the UK, I'm not going to give any makes, names or models, but you can buy something like that direct drive for around about £250-£300. They're not the best in the world, but it will get anyone on their way.
One important factor though, and that is this. If you're going to buy something like that, then look after it, keep all boxes because in a year's time, six months' time when you want to buy better kit, you've got the original kit in good condition, you can bung it in the boxes and you can sell it on eBay. Which also brings me to buying things off eBay. I've mentioned this before. Two very big factors about buying stuff off eBay. Feedback. If someone is selling a small, tiny item for £1.50 and they've got 10 feedbacks, then buy it because, well, it's £1.50. But if they're selling a set of turntables and they've got three feedbacks on those turntables are £500 or £600, again, it's up to you if you want to buy them, but be wary because if you're going to spend a lot of money, you've got to make sure that that person selling the item...
2:19 They're relatively cheap to buy
Is worth their weight in gold because you don't want to start forking out money and have nothing at your door. I'm not saying that's what happens on eBay, what I am saying is you need to be wary and be careful. Also with regards to eBay, you've got to make sure you look at the P&P, the postage. I've done it, you've done it. We've all looked quick, bid, bid, buy, and then all of a sudden you realise the postage is even more than the item you've bought, which is a bit of a no-no. With regards... CDJ turntables as well. Now you can buy an all-in-one unit, well in fact when I say all-in-one, yeah you can actually get the all-in-one but then more importantly what you can buy which is a lot cheaper, you can buy two separate entities. You have the area where you put your CDs in and then you also have the control panel and they're what's known as two units each and they're the sort of things, 19 inch rack mount, they can fit inside a flight case quite happily. Now they're relatively cheap to buy.
3:36 Market, buy a watch for 99p
Okay, they're not the best things in the world. Some are expensive, some are cheap. But let's say you want to buy something and you want to have a mess around to try and get a feel for DJing. Then, in the UK, you can spend £100 and you can get a set of CD players. You can spend £50 or £60 on a mixer. That's £160-odd, a set of headphones, plug it into your hi-fi system and you can become a DJ. You can get the feel of it as opposed to... Thank you for watching. Well, maybe there is a certain element of, you know, you're paying for the name as we do in life. You know, at the end of the day, you buy a watch. What can a watch do? It'll tell you the time. You can go to the market, buy a watch for 99p or you can buy some huge expense, well, huge, not tiny, watch for like five or six thousand pounds that you've got to shake your wrist every five minutes to keep it going and it's terrible at keeping time. Now, I'm not saying that that is the same with DJ gear but there are certain makes
For more information, visit www.ellaskins.com Thank you for watching. Give him this kit, we'll barter over the price. I give him a bit of extra money and I can walk away with another item. A lot of shops will do that. So give that a go as well. So really all this video is on about is buying stuff. Now if you're a parent like I said and your kids are hassling you about buying equipment, what you need to do, you need not to go and buy the most expensive stuff. Please don't just walk into a shop and think, oh it looks nice, I'll buy that. Because there are some makes that aren't as good as others. Check it out. Look on the internet. Just look at different prices. And again, I said this last year. Here's another tip for you. Let's say you open a magazine, the likes of DJ Magazine. You open it up and there's loads of different shops in there. If you know you want to buy a set of turntables, say Technics turntables,
Then you phone one shop, you get a price off them. You phone another shop and you say, well, shop A has just given me a price of X. Can you beat it? And they probably will, even if it's only five, ten quid. At the end of the day, that's a few beers down the pub, isn't it? So I hope this has been a help, and as usual, I waffle. If there's any more information or anything, or you've got any information to give regarding this particular video, then post a video response underneath. Alternatively leave your comments, alternatively you can leave comments with questions and then a lot of people can look at those questions and hopefully answer them and so will I. Practice and enjoy!
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
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