Hey there!! I spoke to my local DJCIty guys the other day who suggested I contact you, because it’s obvious from countless of zero replies from Pioneer, that they simply don’t give 2 fucks about DJ’s. Not even a response of thanks for your idea!!! I have a recommendation that I would love to share with you. I’m a turntablist and always have been. I dislike technology (ie; Serato, Traktor or slave controllers in general). I’d like to suggest creating a turntable unit, like the CDJ2000’s (or your equivalent). In other words, a TT that has its own USB/SSD slot, a screen and the usual bits and bobs for music selecting, and playability. It should have the capacity to convert a time coded record to play whatever has been selected from the USB/SSD, or, flick a switch to use real vinyl. If something like that was available on the market, I would almost give away my CDJNexus units for that!!! The technology is already there!! And when I say TT, I’m talking about a traditional TT with a tone arm!! With the the ability to switch between using a time coded record for the USB function or using real vinyl function… and a screen for scrolling through the USB of course.Thoughts??
You make an excellent point M
20 to 30 years ago maybe but there’s many Drawbacks with vinyl. And when you consider that there are people who say the prime 4 is too big for flight casing and carrying.
Such a design would take up a huge space. Think of it, a turntable like the technics SL-overpriced-1210 mk77 (it’s about that mk now isn’t it?) - that’s as small as a practical turntable can be.
Make the platter any smaller than that and the purists complain they have to adjust and adapt their muscle memory, put any controls in the areas where a vinyl table doesn’t have controls and people complain they catch their fingers or wrists etc on the non-smooth profile.
The weight would put many off too. A platter that has to be a rumble-free stable playback platform for a stylus on a vinyl record has to be near-darn solid. Far more so than just a motorised jogwheel that holds nothing more sensitive than a DJs fingers so a heavy solid platter and a bigger heavier motor to drive that platter at high torque.
So anything you add, you’d have to add outside of the technics turntable footprint eg on the back, front or sides. Put stuff on the front edge and your forcing the turntable platter to be further away from the DJ, who again complains that they have to adapt their style of chirping 50cm away from their ribs instead of 30cm away. Any display that’s smaller than an iPad will cause moans about it being too small and that a laptop is needed for finding songs or seeing waveforms, so add an “iPad at an angle” on the back …
now take a step back and think that some percentage of people will insist on placing the model in battle (lol) mode, So the sides and the back and the front are now not where they were intended…
suddenly that lovely angled iPad display that you put at the Back, is in the way on the side and can’t be read from the front, the things added down the sides are now at the back and all the labels on the buttons and surface are difficult to read, turned 90 degrees around… not too bad when the only controls were power, speed, pitch pot and start/stop, but now 40 buttons are sideways. Technics put a rotatable display on their digital turntable for battle mode users but that display was tiny, probably contributing to its early demise.
It’s now both too big and too heavy for the bus or the backpack, and that’s just one, with no mention of a mixer.
Also every button press could bounce the stylus especially performer pads or hot cues
Add to the above issues also that a lot of DJs want to do it on the cheap too, so buying new stylus every 400 hours of playing, or every 300 hours of scratching, per deck (x 2), is going to tot up quickly, and that’s in a climate of thinning choice of proper DJ stylus’s being available. Shares gone, Stanton not looking so good, Ortofon up-pricing everything as they gain monopoly status.
It’s a very nostalgic idea but there’s too many things which could take it from peoples short lists.
Looks as if the bad language filter needs an update.