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Spinning at a club with bad equipment

I spun at a lounge/club last night that had a mixer with no EQ's. I didn't even know they made mixers without them. I just mixed much faster than normal and ended up doing alright. Have any of you encountered this.. how did you deal?

The place also didn't have a monitor (and the closest speaker to me was far away) so I had to drop both tracks full volume in my headphones to mix. The whole night I'm pulling mixes and I have little idea how they sound. And the play button on the cd deck had about a one second delay (it was sometimes shorter or longer). Until I adjusted I was very

just do the best you can.

I played at one club with no eqs and it killed my great transitions. but you can only do what they afford you to do.



thats the fun part about djin

once played on a megga ghetto setup of no turntabels, and the cd decks dident have any pitch, i dident actually mix on them just stuck a mix cd in and pretended to. not going to soil my name by playing on that shit lol.

I regularly encounter cd players with broken pitch buttons or trays.
Un serviced technics with beer spilt in them- ( the one that went to 78rpm as soon as you pitched it past +5% was interesting). Mixers with blown channels missing pots or mono channels.
The stand in mixer with no gains or eqs was interesting.
No monitors, no bass bins and no split/blend/multi cue option on the mixer was fun too.

All sorts of shit.
Im not going to become some elitist prick and walk out over stuff like that- i can mix on anything and im professional in my approach. But ill make sure they know its not acceptable.

You can only work with the tools you are given and sometimes you do come across bar owners/club owners who don't understand the finer points of DJing.

I agree it's hard if you can't hear everything but on the other hand you can still do transitions to a reasonable level if you use the channel faders in the correct way.

It's never ideal but it's always good to learn from.

Use the experience to learn what makes people excited.

Cheers
Nem

quote:

Originally posted by _-MIl0 once played on a megga ghetto setup of no turntabels, and the cd decks dident have any pitch, i dident actually mix on them just stuck a mix cd in and pretended to. not going to soil my name by playing on that shit lol.

thats funny!! I wish you had a video tape of this. It would be funny to see you pretend you were mixing...heehe

quote:

Originally posted by Freak I regularly encounter cd players with broken pitch buttons or trays. Un serviced technics with beer spilt in them- ( the one that went to 78rpm as soon as you pitched it past +5% was interesting). Mixers with blown channels missing pots or mono channels. The stand in mixer with no gains or eqs was interesting. No monitors, no bass bins and no split/blend/multi cue option on the mixer was fun too. All sorts of shit. Im not going to become some elitist prick and walk out over stuff like that- i can mix on anything and im professional in my approach. But ill make sure they know its not acceptable.

sounds like fun to me! and a good attitude to have

i learnt on a mixer which had eq's but they didn't work. you just have to be a bit more useful with your faders, i.e. instead of dropping the bass from a track, just slip the fader down a little bit to stop the beats phasing. granted, its not ideal, but it means you have to spend time making sure your beatmatching is bang on.

it is a pity when a venue hires a dj and doesn't give him/her the top notch equipment, but this is precisely why i think its good to start learning on shit equipment. it means you are equipt to deal with pretty much any situation.

Damn..some of you guys had it really bad. Fortunatly for me, the worse setup I have ever encountered involved either the mixer missing the plastic piece for the channel slider and crossfader or no monitor. Oh yeh, Gemini mixers really suck. I just found out from experience on Sat. night

Numark - Blue dog isn't exactly the king of mixers either, had an experience with one of them at an illeagal party on Brighton beach a few weeks back.
Loose sliders that have more snap crackle and pop than a world famous breakfast cereal.

KAM have some really hideous offerings too.

To be fair though, any mixer can suck if it's been hammered to buggery and the same is true for decks too.

Cheers
Nem

I've encountered all that stuff... spinning in the smaller room and the white room in Exit in NY (now called Ikon)not only did they have no eq's but much much worse the cd players couldn't handle the bass in the room - even with the monitors turned all the way down. So, any cd that I used even if it was brand new skipped like a bastard - once my cd started skipping I wished that I could hide under the turntables...

the worst thing about these places is that so much money goes through them and they still can't even afford equipment as good as what's in my bedroom

if i walked into a club on the night i was DJing, and saw a really crappy setup, i would pic up the mic before i started and tell everybody ahead of time not to expect too much cause this setup blows. and afterwards i would talk to the club owner about how he should set it all up and what he needs to do to really appeal. if anything i would just go in ahead of time to check it out and tell the club owner i wont play unless i can use my own shit. then i would just carry my own equipment up from my car, hook it up, and drop a spankin beat.

quote:

Originally posted by PVD & T[]C if i walked into a club on the night i was DJing, and saw a really crappy setup, i would pic up the mic before i started and tell everybody ahead of time not to expect too much cause this setup blows.

and you would look like a twat for it.

to be honest, there will have already been people who have told the owner how much the setup is shite, but often it makes fuck-all difference because these people only care about 1 thing, and thats � or $.

the best thing to do is quiz the promoter who hired you about the setup before you play, and if it is shite, then ask if you can bring your own gear. most of the time they will be happy to let you, so long as you are ok about your gear not being insured.

quote:

Originally posted by Nemesis44 Numark - Blue dog isn't exactly the king of mixers either, had an experience with one of them at an illeagal party on Brighton beach a few weeks back. Loose sliders that have more snap crackle and pop than a world famous breakfast cereal.

My first Mixer!

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