Maintaining and Fixing Yiur Own DJ Kit

0:00 Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor here and welcome to cat heaven

Right guys, Jonathan Ellaskins, The DJ Tutor here and welcome to cat heaven. There's only two on the table at the moment. Do have three kittens, had them recently, well I've had sort of three or four months now and they are absolute pain in the arses but I wouldn't be without them. The only difficulty is sleeping at night because apart from Bobby Socks as well which has got a big cat, there's three kittens as well on the bed so very little room for me to wriggle about. Anyway, moving on. Someone has asked recently and a few people in the past about doing a video on gear maintenance. Now this possibly could save you a very lot of money, an exceedingly large sum of money but in not the way that you think.

Coughing there. Also I've talked to people who have said oh get your cough sorted. Well I'm slightly asthmatic and I do get sort of phlegm there and this and the other and I've had it for years and years and years and I'm not dead yet. So thumbs up for that one anyway. Right, gear maintenance. Now this is the DDJ 400 and if I have a look at the back we've got a whole bunch of holes where you can probably have screws and unscrew it and if I was to open this which I wouldn't if I did I'd be an idiot but all I'd probably find is a couple of circuit boards, some LEDs and that's about it. No moving parts, nothing at all.

And actually here in this said item there are no serviceable parts for the general public. Now let's imagine that this was indeed five or six years old and the pots were wearing out, the faders, upfaders, crossfade, the dials started to crackle and pop and so on. You'd start to wonder is it worth keeping it or maybe it should just go to the skip in the sky? But at that point after four or five years if you do a little bit of research and maybe work out via YouTube, loads of videos I'm sure on how to unplug anything, pull anything apart then indeed you probably can open it up and have a look and maybe change one of the sliders and so on. But if you do anything like that within a warranty of a piece of kit that warranty very likely will be nil and void.

2:25 I can fix it, pull it apart only to find I can't

So in other words... If this item was under 12 months old and all of a sudden it stops working, I'm like I'm a genius. I can fix it, pull it apart only to find I can't. Put it back together, send it to the appropriate dealer who then more than likely will send it back to the company. They will do a bit of research on it, realise it's already been opened, contact the shop store. Did you open it? No. Then put two and two together and you probably won't get any form of compensation. You'll just have to wait. You'll just get a very polite slap on the wrist saying I'm really sorry, but you opened it up. You voided your warranty and tough. So what I'm trying to say in this video, really, unless you are a bit of a sparky and that's what we call someone who is rather good with electronics in the UK.

Then my advice is don't pull anything apart if you don't know what you're doing. Even if you do know what you're doing. You need to make damn sure. That you know what you're doing and also you are able to put it back together again. And, you know, beyond shadow of a doubt, 100 percent, you will be able to fix said item. Of course, the best line of defence here is to make sure that you take it to a reputable electronics dealer who understands the workings of the item you need to be fixed. Give it to them. Pay the money. Peace of mind that you know it's going to be fixed. So please don't do it yourself. Many videos I have got a piece of kit, opened it up and I have always said in a disclaimer, don't do this.

I'm showing you the internal workings. And the reason I'm doing it is so you don't have to. So let's imagine you've got a moving head or something like that now with modern day controllers like this DDJ 400 from Pioneer. Like I said earlier, there's no moving parts. There's very little inside here. You know, gone are the days. Gone are the days of having massive circuit boards and capacitors and resistors and all of this gumph. Nowadays, it's probably one silicon chip. A bunch of little wires connecting on a circuit board. Couple of wheelie things here. Uppy downy things. Some circular dialy things. Uppy downy things here. And that's about it. Whereas if we go into a moving head, there's a lot more in there because you've got fans.

You've got motors. Stepper motors. You've got lenses. You've got prisms. And so on and so on. So this is where it gets slightly more interesting because if you have a moving head and all of a sudden, let's say the head itself doesn't move. Now that could be the circuit board connected to the head or it could be a motor. So I'm not saying that all of a sudden now you do not open up the likes of a controller but far away fill your boots and just get your screwdrivers out and start pulling apart your moving heads. You don't want to do that. But there are more, there's more parts in there. And also it's a little bit more easier even for an idiot to find out what's wrong because for example if the thing does not turn on,

5:50 Like I said, the motors don't work

The first thing you do is check the fuse. Simple. If it turns on but say for example... Excuse me. One of the... Like I said, the motors don't work. Then it's highly likely it could be the motors burnt out or it could be the circuit board. Alternatively with a lot of technical items like that, moving heads, lasers and whatnot, what you've got is you've got different circuit boards and they are attached by cables and at the end of those cables there are plastic plugs. Now they should theoretically be secured. Really well. But on the odd occasion, one of them may pull apart and it may just be a case of open it up and push it back in. So a bit of advice here. And again do not do this unless you are fully trained,

You understand what you're doing, you accept the consequences that you could be doing more damage than good. But if you feel as though yeah I've got a bit of confidence, then make sure... Make sure the item is not plugged in. Open it up, make sure you keep all the screws in a position where you took them off. So in other words if you've got screw 1, 2, 3, 4 at the top of the item, make sure when you place them down you place them on the floor 1, 2, 3, 4 because sometimes some screws are longer and shorter than the others and if you put a long one in a short place and a short place in a long one you're going to bugger the threads up. Don't do that. The next thing I would be doing is I would be just having a look inside the item

To see if anything is loose. Anything doesn't appear as though it's sort of... I'll start again. Anything that appears as though it's in the wrong place or anything that seems to be dark, like there could be a dark patch somewhere and this could be because something's burnt out. Again, sounds crazy but it's a fact. Smell the item. Does it smell as though there's been a small... not so much a fire in there but something's been smouldering in there because quite often you could have some part of it that's burnt out. So, have a look and are there any parts in there that have just gone off colour? Also, there's something in the industry or not so much industry but something that's called a dry joint. Now on a circuit board

8:13 Firstly if your item is wi

You have a lot of components soldered to that circuit board. Over time some of the solder could come loose and even though it looks fine a particular component it could be that some of the solder has come away and it's slightly loose so all of a sudden your piece of kit's working then it stops. Works, stops. It could be because you've got what's known as a dry joint where one of the legs on the small component isn't soldered securely so check that. But I'm going to finish this video now with I think the most important part two actually number one actually three, seven five hundred and sixty-three and a half parts I don't know. Firstly if your item is within twelve months old do not open it up it should have a full warranty

Of course if you bought it from new if you buy it off eBay second hand and they say it's twelve months old or less than twelve months you know you have to you have to take that at face value the best thing to do is buy from a reputable dealer all the time guaranteed to get your twelve months warranty anything goes wrong inside that time send it back let them look at it because you're guaranteed of if not getting that item fixed they should replace the item with a new item if they can't fix it. The next one of course is to if it's after twelve months to make sure that you send it to someone who understands electronics and who can indeed fix it for you. The third one is maybe give it a go yourself if you haven't got the money but it's very, very old

Because what you've got to think of here is the value is the value of that item worth paying someone to fix it when the value of the item could only be say fifty pounds euros or dollars and someone isn't going to come along and fix it for two pound fifty or two and a half dollars because if they're a professional they're probably going to charge you per hour plus parts so you may find that the actual value of the product isn't even worth being fixed because fixing it will probably cost twice as much as the actual item if that's the case digressing slightly then why don't you keep it and buy another one and you've got one for parts. The other one is just chuck it just get rid of it move it on if you've had a good few years out of it then just get rid of it

Alright so I hope this has helped but really to wrap all of this up the best thing you can do is get someone else to look at your piece of kit because the last thing you want to do is cause more damage practice and enjoy thank you

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.