YEAH! i almost have enough money to buy a kit thanks to my b-day! So....which kit for the more scraching then mixing DJ? (i got a few ideas, but asking for the advice and wisedom of the varied (and i mean varied ) Age group here!

Reply away and advise me!

Well, generically speaking...(EG: Mentioning no brand names)...for scratching vinyls you need either one or two direct drive turntables offering you enough Torque (Umph!) to keep the platter going around at the right speed, whilst you manipulate the record (and therefore the slipmat beneath) back and forth with your hand.

A mixer offering two channels is really all you'd need for scratching, however, scratching is tremendously severe on mixer controls. Depending on your style, or technique, the controls which will wear out the quickest will be, The Crossfader, the channel faders, the input selector switches (or Transformer buttons). Therefore its virtually a must that you consider a mixer which offers USER replacable parts for these controls. Consider also, the replacement cost of the parts, since some crossfaders can be £30 ~ £40. Many faders mention an expected lifecycle of say, 200,000 operations (or cycles). Given that a scratcher, or Turntablist, might cycle the crossfader a couple of hundred times per record, its easy to see how some "heavy" practicers, report fader failures after only a few short weeks.

Other mixer features, such as Equalisation, Split cue, samplers, effects etc...are nice, but firstly feature rarely in the Turntablists list of priorities, and even worse, could phsyically get in the way of the crossfader/faders that you need quick'n'easy access to.

Unless you have a hi-fi system at home, which has an AUX IN, or CD IN, or MD IN sockets, you'll need to invest in an Amp and some speakers for home/bedroom use to. So remember to budget for that. For turntablism, don't worry unnessecarily about top quality cables between your Decks, mixer, and amp. Simple £3~£5 each cables will be fine for your purpose.

If possible...try out a few makes/models of mixers, simply for fader "feel" and control layout. This "touchy/feely" requirement is acheived easily at Plasa, In London, this September. All the leading manufacturers will be there, and the Sunday (the first of the 4 days) is known as "DJ Day", its a great chance for you to play (urrrmmm) Assess, all the current/future models.

alright thx Gary. Hmmmm so probably the numark pak or the stanton then.....

I suspect that Numark and Stanton probably do more than one pack each, but as long as the contents of the packs feature units with the above specs, then its all down to your own personal taste - which has A LOT to do with everyones final choice. (I turned down a heavily discounted Tascam X-9 Mixer last September as I didn't like the "old" method it used for assigning channels to the crossfade...its just being human I guess)

Down to specific models of Turntable (assuming you're still looking at tradtional vinyl, even though quite a few CD-decks can scratch), I can heartily recommend the Numark TT-200 deck. I used one side by side besides a Technics SL1210 (for a magazine-length review), and the performance was identical. Also, the TT-200 has interchangable tone arms (Straight for scratching, but alledgedly slightly lower sound quality and slightly great record wear, or S-shaped for slightly less "hold" on the record during scratching, but slightly better sound quality, and slightly less wear and tear on your vinyls). Note the use of the word slightly....perhaps "Almost insigificantly" would have been a better phrase...theres really not THAT many pro's and con's to the tone arm shape, that careful setting up of the Anti-skate, etc wont do for you.

darn....Numark doesn't sell their TT-200 in a kit deal...(unless chris magically happens to have one)......

Stanton has their str8-## (number in the #) series...all straight arms....