DJing with turntables is hard, tricky to master, and expensive. Yet many people still mix tunes this way. And many DJs say they find it rewarding and more fun than digital DJ’ing.
But how do you actually DJ with turntables? And there any differences DJ’ing with turntables when compared with other types of DJ’ing?
Now, I’ve been using turntables for over 20+ years for DJing and I’d like to think I know a little about them. So, I’ve put this article together for anyone thinking of using turntables for DJ’ing.
Before reading this guide, I would recommend that you read my article on the hardware side of DJing turntables. Whilst this guide concerns itself with some of the unique problems of being a vinyl DJ.
Table of Contents
What do I need to DJ with turntables?
A basic turntable DJ setup comprises of:
- A pair of turntables
- A mixer
- A record collection
- Cables
- Pair of headphones
- Amplifier and speakers or a pair of active speakers (these are speakers with amplifiers built into them)
- (Optional) DVS control system like Serato, Traktor and Ms Pinky
There’s something about buying vinyl
I must admit something. And it’s something which is lacking with digital DJing. Buying vinyl is rewarding. Especially buying records the old-fashioned way. Namely, travelling to a city (in my case Manchester) and spending the whole day digging through crates of vinyl in shops and stores.
Sadly, I have done any crate digging in years. Mainly because it’s expensive, I lack the time, and I’m fully converted to digital DJ’ing these days. But I do miss that side of DJ’ing.
It’s hard to put into words why crate digging was so much fun. But I think it’s because of the tactile nature of the vinyl.
Vinyl comes with big artwork. Old and used records have an air of mystery and history. And frequent record-buying fosters relationships with store owners and shop staff.
Much of this disappeared with the rise of digital DJ’ing. Today we exchange all the above for convenience, portability and affordability.
Buying vinyl records
Buying records is an expensive hobby.
It was expensive when I started buying back in the ’90s. And it worse now than ever.
To show demonstrate this point, we can perform a quick test.
Pick a popular music album or single out. And then find an online record store which sells both digital downloads and vinyl albums. You can use Amazon for this, but in my case, I’ll use Juno and Junodownload.
Anyway, find the digital and vinyl versions of the same album, and then compare prices.
I just did that for the recent Gangstarr album and it’s £6.24 for the digital version and £21.99 for the vinyl copy.
So, it’s safe to say that buying vinyl is three to four time more expensive than digital.
And, if you want to DJ with a pure vinyl setup, you need to consider this cost – assuming you don’t already own any records.
Vinyl: A restrictive music format
The costs and bulkiness of vinyl make it a restrictive format. This isn’t a bad thing because it limits your choices.
Contrast this with digital DJ’ing. Every experienced digital DJ will tell you it’s easy to amass a massive tune collection. Most digital DJ’s will have faced the situation where they have thousands of tracks at their fingertips, but they struggle to choose anything.
This is natural. Human beings don’t like lots of options, and too many choices can lead to things like choice paralysis.
So don’t let the cost of DJ’ing with vinyl put you off. The limits the medium imposes may not be a bad thing.
How to gain a record collection cheap and fast
It’s annoying having some decks and only having a few records to play them. This happened to me when I started DJ’ing back in the day. And it’s one of the main problems when starting out as a vinyl DJ.
However, here are some tips to help speed up acquiring a sizeable records collection.
Buy a used record collection
The easiest way to gain a substantial vinyl collection is to buy one second-hand. So always keep checking eBay, Craigslist, local classifieds, etc.
Unfortunately, I see fewer record collections for sale these days than in the past.
Around the mid-2000s, you could pick up some real vinyl collections bargain. Many DJ’s were switching to digital. There was a glut of used vinyl on the market. And used records had gotten cheap. The much-touted vinyl revival had yet to happen and many weren’t buying the black discs anymore.
But now things are different.
Vinyl has become popular again. More people are buying records, thus more people will snap up any collections when they are for sale.
And now more DJ’s see their records as collectors’ items and are reluctant to sell anything.
Plus, most people know of sites like Discogs. Meaning, when they sell, they price their vinyl according to market prices.
Lastly, many sellers now split collection and sell records individually as they’ll get more money.
So, if you do buy a used collection, expect to pay a fair price.
Sellers are savvy these days compared with the past. And with the aid of Discogs, it’s easy to accurately price vinyl.
Is it still worth the time buying a record collection? Yes, as it’s the easiest way to gain many records at once.
But if you see a vinyl collection for sale, you must act quick and be prepared to buy it at a fair price.
Buy used records
Another way to bulk up your vinyl collection is to buy used records.
eBay is the obvious choice for this, but there’s a better solution: Discogs.
Discogs is an online music database and marketplace. However, unlike eBay, the site sells nothing other than music.
Because Discogs focuses on music it has some unique features which make it superb for buying records. One of them is want-lists.
Wants lists on Discogs work similarly to those on Amazon and other eCommerce sites. You can add tracks to your lists and get notified when the tracks are available to buy.
Now, the main problem with buying records from Discogs is postage. However, you can minimise your postage costs if you buy multiple records from one seller. And your wants list will help you with this.
I recommend that you spend some time on Discogs and populate your wants lists with wanted tracks. The bigger you make your list the better this technique will work.
When browsing Discogs sellers, the site will inform you if a seller has any of your wanted tracks. This makes it far easier to find sellers who have multiple items which you want. Buying several records from a seller means you’ll often pay fewer postage costs.
Another bonus: some sellers discount when you buy multiple records from them. Thus, saving you cash over the long run.
So, spend some time building big wants lists on Discogs. It’s the best way to get the most from the site and it can make buying records a little cheaper.
Buy some vinyl albums
Buying some vinyl albums is a great way to gain lots of tracks for DJ’ing. Albums are far more cost-effective than buying loads of singles.
The downsides are you’ll end up with some filler and mediocre tracks. And you can’t mix the album tracks if they’re on the same piece of vinyl.
Buy your vinyl records before you buy any gear
Another idea to help you build your DJ record collection: buy vinyl before buying any DJ’ing equipment.
Before I bought my first decks, I started collecting records. I did this for about twelve months prior to getting any equipment.
This meant that by the time I bought my turntables I had about 100 records to mix. This was more than enough to keep me interested and stop me from becoming bored.
So, if you’re mulling over buying a pair of turntables in the future, start buying your records now. Because you’ll appreciate having more records to mix when you do finally get around to buying some DJ’ing gear.
Go halves with a friend
Another way to amass a sizeable record collection is the go halves with a friend. Do you have a flatmate, sibling, or roommate who shares your interest in spinning the black discs? Well then, why not split the cost of buying records.
One word of warning: make sure you keep a note of who buys what.
Back in the day, I knew people at college who joined their funds for buying records. All was fine till they had to go their separate ways. Then the arguments started about who owned what.
Another advantage of going halves is that sometimes your partner might give up. So, you might be able to buy their record collection from them (and possibly the DJing gear) at a good price.
Buying scratch records
If you’re planning to scratch, you must buy some battle records.
One good battle record will suffice at the beginning. As for recommendations, I can recommend anything by the Dirt Style record label (Q-Berts record label). The Super Ducks Breaks scratch record is old but still a great choice.
If you want to get into beat juggling, you’ll need two copies of any singles or beat records. Pure vinyl beat juggling can be an expensive affair – because you must buy everything twice.
Most turntablist these days tend to just use a DVS (Traktor, Serato) for juggling. As owning such a system allows you to beat juggle your whole digital music collection.
Here’s a good tip if you’re buying your battle records: buy them from a physical record store. I recommend that you do this because you can inspect your records before purchase. I’ve bought many battle records online, only to realise later they’re warped. Scratching with bendy records sucks.
Choosing your mixer
There are two questions to consider when buying a DJ mixer for turntables. Ask yourself:
- How many channels do I need?
- Do I want to scratch with my mixer or just mix records?
How many channels does my DJ mixer need for vinyl?
A common mistake many new DJs make is buying mixers with multiple channels. I’m not talking about 3 or 4 channel mixers. But most DJs won’t need 8 or 16 channels to mix at the same time.
Most DJ won’t need over 3 or 4 channels max. If you’re planning to scratch two is more than enough.
What crossfader should I choose for mixing vinyl?
If you want to scratch buy a mixer with a good crossfader. Rane DJ mixers are your best choice.
You can pick up a TTM 56 for good money these days. Those mixers are built like tanks. And they have great EQs and other features built into them. They’re also excellent for mixing too.
Pioneer DJ mixers are great for DJ’s who want a good mixing mixer, and for individuals wanting to replicate a club setup. Even today Pioneer mixers are the industry standard for clubs.
Lastly, getting used to Pioneer mixers makes it easier to transfer your skills when playing at live events. Because they’re the default mixer used in 99% of club installations.
Buying DJ’ing turntables
I’ve covered buying turntables in greater depth in this article.
Buying Slipmatts for your DJ decks
Not all slipmats are created equal. Well, they are if you just planning to mix records and not scratch.
Any old slipmats will do for mixing tunes (apart from the heavy rubber types). But if you want to scratch you should know the thickness of the slipmats affects scratching.
Basically, thicker slipmats make mixing and beatmatch easier. But thicker slipmats are harder for hardcore scratching. You can scratch with thick slipmats, but it makes some advanced scratching techniques more difficult.
Personally, I use Thud’n’Rumble’s Butter Rugz. They’re the thinnest and most slippery slipmats you can buy. They’re superb for scratching but make mixing hard. But my DJ’ing setup maximises my scratching.
There’s no right or wrong choice here, it boils down to personal preference.
Beatmatching with turntables
Now, I will not go into detail about the mechanics of beatmatching. Mainly because it’s difficult to create a written guide on beatmatching. I think the subject is better explained in videos. Plus, you can find many great tutorials online showing you beatmatching basics.
However, I will share with you some tips which will help you to beatmatch with turntables.
Vinyl DJ beat matching tip No 1
Matching the beats (or BPMs) is difficult on turntables when compared with digital DJ’ing.
You’ll never ever be able to perfectly beatmatch two or more records. Your records will always drift out of sync given enough time.
Turntables suffer from wow and flutter which causes slight tempo fluctuations. This makes it impossible to perfectly sync tempos between turntables.
When mixing records and matching BPMs you will need to make corrections. You will have to speed up and slow down your records (whilst mixing) to ensure your BPMs stay in time.
You can make tempo corrections using the turntable pitch or by touching/pushing your records. This corrective action will help to maintain a matched beat, thus avoiding the ‘galloping horses’ sound which happens when the beats go out of sync.
When beatmatching use your turntable pitch (or record holds/nudges) to chase and match the tempo of the other record.
Vinyl DJ beat matching tip No 2
Do you want to learn how to beat match on turntables fast? Then buy two copies of the same record and try mixing them at different tempos.
If you’ve never beat-matched on turntables before this can be a great way to understand the process. The easiest records to mix are those which sound the same.
Because you’re mixing two identical tunes you’ll worry less about the EQ and volume and concentrate more on the aligning the tempos.
Vinyl DJ beat matching tip No 3
Some styles of music are easier to mix than others.
I mix old school house music and classic rap & hip-hop. And I also dabble with newish techno.
The early hip-hop and house music are far more difficult to mix than modern techno. The older music’s tempo changes much more.
I find I must jog, nudge, and alter the pitch with old music than the new. I think part of the problem resides with the drum machines used to produce the older music. The timings in those old drum machines weren’t as accurate and it could slip.
When mixing old hip-hop and early house music on turntables, you deal with two problems. First: the inaccurate timings of the drum machines used to produce the music. Second: the natural wow and flutter you get on with any turntable.
Combine them together and you have difficult music style to beatmatch.
Do records wear out?
Many people worry that DJing can damage and wear out their records. Here’s my answer…
Straightforward mixing and queueing of record won’t cause any damage or wear your records.
I speak of this point from personal experience. I’ve owned some of my pieces of vinyl for 20 years, and sound as good today as the day I first bought them.
However, you can and will damage your records accidentally when DJ’ing. You might do unintentional things like dropping your records, dropping the stylus on your records, etc, – all these things will harm your vinyl.
There’s nothing you can do about this as it comes with the territory.
Scratching your records will wear them out. This is one DJ’ing technique which damages vinyl. It’s not a fast process but given enough time it will wear the record. It’s hard to give you precise timeframe because it depends on how you scratch the amount of practice you do.
I recommend that you practice scratching with battle records or a DVS system. That way you don’t wear out any rare or valuable records.
Finally, as I mentioned in this article. Records used for DJ’ing will become grubby and this will diminish the sound quality. Although this isn’t physical and permeant damage. If you think your vinyl sounds dull, it might be time to give it a good clean. Often this is all that’s needed to make old DJ’ing records sound great again.
Does vinyl Sound better?
This is an argument which comes up again and again in DJing circles. Does vinyl sound better than digital for DJing? My answer is no.
I think many DJ’s would like to think vinyl sounds better. Mainly because it costs more and it’s an analogue format.
But there are physical limitations present with vinyl which stop it sounding as good as a digital signal.
Two examples are: vinyl has a higher floor noise than digital, and vinyl bass is always mixed in mono to prevent stylus skipping.
Turntables are more prone to volume feedback too. And feedback is a major problem when DJ’ing in a live environment. If the turntables at a live event aren’t isolated correctly, feedback can really spoil the sound.
Plus, as I’ve stated before, many DJ vinyl collections are dirty too. Thus, reducing sound quality even further.
CDJs and controllers by contrast have none of these problems (although the soundcards on controllers can shite – but that’s a different strory).
As you can see, it’s easy to screw up the sound quality on vinyl. And I’ve not even discussed other problems like damaged turntables, scratchy vinyl, and incorrectly set up tonearms/carts/styluses.
All that being said, vinyl can still sound good. It just takes a little more work to get it to sound nice.
I recommend that when DJ’ing with vinyl, keep your needle and stylus clean. And clean your records. Also, invest in a decent record cleaning brush which you can take to gigs. All these things will help to improve the sound quality of your mix sets.
Record boxes
Once you own over 30 or more vinyl records, buy a flight case record box. Because these heavy-duty boxes will protect your vinyl. And you can lock the better cases – stopping any sicky finger DJ’s from pilfering your precious discs.
When buying a record box flight case stick to those which will fit 80-100 records. 100 capacity record boxes are heavy and difficult to carry. You don’t want to buy record boxes which are any bigger because they’re far too heavy for most people.
Transporting your turntables
At some point, you will end up transporting your turntables to gigs or party. Be careful, because turntables are easy to damage and can be expensive to fix.
Tonearms are the easiest thing to damage during transport. It’s easy to bend a tonearm and in extreme cases rip them from the turntable. Remember, the little hook which secures the tonearm on your deck isn’t strong. If you’re travelling far, consider taping the tonearm in place for extra support.
Most turntables will also allow you to remove platter too. Removing the platters can prevent you from damaging the motor and its magnets.
Obviously, when transporting turntables, remove your needle and stylus from the deck. Ideally, invest in a dedicated case for transporting your needles and styluses. It’s easy to damage a needle and cartridge – they’re the least durable thing on a turntable.
The last thing you need is to turn up to a gig, only to find your needles are bent and unusable. So, invest in a good case for them. Think of it as insurance.
Buying a flight case for turntables
If you are frequently moving your turntables around invest in a flight case. This is the best way to protect your turntable from damage.
But remember, even when they’re in a flight case, a turntable isn’t invulnerable. You can still break them if you drop the case.
But a good case will protect them from the worst damage. And it means you can plonk stuff on top of your case with worrying if you will damage anything.
You can also buy full-length flight cases which house the mixer too. The great thing about these cases is that you can route your cables. Meaning, when you arrive at a gig, you just open the case, plugin in a few wires, and you’re ready to play.
I have my turntables set up in a flight case like this. It’s a superb way to transport your gear whilst minimising set up times. The downside is it the cases is very heavy and difficult to transport. You need two people to lift it up and downstairs.
If you want to house your turntables and mixer in a full-length case, buy a case with wheels. Wheeled cases work similarly to those you find in a suitcase. It makes transporting the case much easier. It can be done by one person if the ground is smooth enough.
You can buy DJ stands which are designed for full-length flight cases. I have on these and it’s great. My DJ stand isn’t as robust as a proper DJ booth but it’s sturdy enough for my scratching skills.
Another advantage of buying a dedicated DJ flight case stand is that you can buy one at a specific height. Turntables set too low down are horrible for long DJ sets – you’ll end up stooping which isn’t good for your back.
When you buy a flight case stand you can pick the height which is better for your height and more comfortable to use.
Maintenance for vinyl DJ’s
Many DJ’s ask me how to maintain their decks and mixers? Well, to be honest, there’s not much you can do.
The first thing to do is to keep stuff clean. Cover your turntables and mixer when they’re not in use. Either use the covers which come with your decks or put a sheet over them. This will prevent dust from getting into the faders.
A can of switch cleaning spray is handy for maintenance. Switch cleaning spray can free up hard to move faders. It can also help to repair faders which might have had fluids tipped into them.
For DJ mixer maintenance, crossfaders are often the first things to go. Crossfaders (and most faders) are easy to replace. You just need a screwdriver and a replacement fader.
If you’re planning to buy a used DJ mixer, check you can get spare parts first. You can no longer get spare parts for certain brands and models of DJ mixers. The last thing you want to own a mixer which is no longer serviceable.
Never, ever, ever use WD40 or similar oil on audio or turntable faders. There are chemicals in WD40 (and similar oils) which will dissolve electronic components. WD40 isn’t switch cleaning fluid: switch cleaning fluid is a different solvent all together.
And, don’t use switch cleaning fluid on a turntable pitch unless you must. Because, although it cleans the pitch fader, it removes any lubricant. You’ll want to apply some electrical grease afterwards.
If you don’t apply grease after cleaning, the pitch becomes difficult to use and feels jumpy. Applying grease to a pitch control is difficult because the pitch controls aren’t designed to be opened.
To Conclude, if you’re not comfortable performing maintenance on your DJ gear, hire a professional. Most cities will have a few shops or companies who know how to repair and maintain DJ equipment. If you doubt your skills let a pro do the work – that way you don’t damage something.
Think I’ve missed something? Want to share a tip which isn’t mentioned? Need advice on anything I’ve mentioned. Why not add a comment below. I always reaspond to them.
