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See, it pays to be prepared for anything.
Ive always made it a point to be prepared for anything at work- be it carrying far too many records, extra stylus, spare headphones, leads, multi tool, the lot- as its pretty inevitable you will encounter most situations at some point. Myself an most working djs will have enocountered all sorts of horrors and wierd and wonderful situations.
However- i encountered something new last night.
I turned up for work, and discovered instead of my favourite ever mixer-Cloud CXM- which is used in loads of venues i work at..i adore these mixers:
I turned up to discover a cloud that had blown its transformer the previous night ( someone spilt drink on it a few weeks back- imconvinced its to do with that), with no spare transformer, and in its place a Vestax PMC55:
Now ive never used this vestax before- but straight away i knew it was gonna be fun. You see, vestax have no split cue, and i personally like to use that method- i havent mixed one ear on 'phones/one on monitor at a club for probably well over a year.
Im perfectly competent doing it that way (i did for years anyway), i just dont like it as much, as i find it doesnt give me as much control as hearing one source in each ear- personal preference.
The problem is, this club is mega loud- and the monitors are quite small- in addition to there being some of the main system pointing directly at the dj console (about 5 metres away- nice design  ), which makes it extremely hard to seperate the monitors from the main system (which is of course delayed..)
So i spent the majority of the night mixing double cued (as in both channels selected at once, putting both in both ears)- im fine mixing this way.
My impressions of the mixer? Nowhere near as good as the cloud-and no kill switches, but its quite impressive.
Very warm sounding, and smooth. The eq cuts are quite severe (probably to make up for the lack of kills), but its nice- the level meters on each channel are also handy- and very accurate.
Someone had the stupid idea to put the master pot (no fader  ) directly next to the pot for the booth monitor which i could see potentially being mixed up by peeps somewhat more intoxicated..
No XLR input for mic either- just a jack input....dumbasses.
Overall-very nice and competent mixer- but i still fail to see why a split function was left off a high end -pro mixer, which should therefore be flexible enough to cover any situation. Its a niggle- a small one- but a niggle nonetheless.
Freaks final thought:
The point of this post? erm.. i suppose just to emphasise how important it is to be multi skilled and prepared for anything- as you never know what you will find in your dj console when you turn up- this is somewhere i play at every saturday, and have done for a while- and it took me totally by surprise.
Take care of yourselves, and each other.
/essay 
Last edited by Freak on Apr-04-2004 at 18:27
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