Total Ripoff Pioneer Spares

[Phil Allison]

Arfa Daily wrote:

** Back in the mid 70s when disco took off in Australia, I had quite a few
customers who hired out DJ equipment - some of these systems were large
enough to double as a PA for bands.

The failure rate of the amplifiers was very high and so I got plenty of
repair work on SAE 2200s & 2400s, Phase Linear 400s & 700s and Yamaha 2200
power amplifiers and many others.

I even designed a good quality DJ mixer that was produced in quantity and
sold as JAI Sound.

When the disco craze started to wane in the late 80s, things turned nasty
and a lot of crims entered the business - mostly as DJs who has bought
their own gear.

One of my regular customers disposed of all his DJ hire stock cos he was
getting constant death threats from competitors. It was that nasty.

Disco use is the hardest use of amps and speakers I know of - add take
away hire to almost anyone and you have a disaster looing for somewhere to
happen.

IME, DJs are equipment wreckers and thoroughly nasty people.



The
Pioneer CDJs are nothing at all like a conventional CD player,

** I have seen and done work on Pioneer CDJ850s and a few similar units. Also rather nice disco mixers made by Allen & Heath - which, despite being built in China, avoid using SMD and are easy to access work on.

> You are even out of date - at least in this country,

** My post, like TW's is about the scene in Sydney, Australia.

My most recent disco hire customer sold and rented out the exact sort of gear you mention plus a range of dB Tech powered speakers - mainly Opera and Fifty series. The failure rates with these was frightening, as they were never engineered for such hard use.

I no longer deal with DJs (since the mid 1990s) as so few of them own any sound equipment. All Sydney's nightclubs have elaborate, installed systems and I get their power amps brought to me for service from time to time - usually in the worst condition I have ever seen power amps get into.

And the venue operators invariably expect to pay next to nothing for repairs.


.... Phil

 

[Gareth Magennis]

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message news:Vp7Gw.918734$ci4.848257@fx39.am4...

** Crikey !!!

AD must deal with a whole different kind of "DJ" to the ones I come
across.

Words like "tight-arse", "con-artist", "hassler" and "whinger" cover most
of them while the rest are straight out crims or drug dealers.

**That has been my experience with these scum too. When I've dealt with
them, I have felt an uncontrollable need to check my valuables and have a
good bath.


--
Trevor Wilson

Then there must be something really odd about the profession in your
country. I have found them to be nothing of the sort here. Either that, or
we're not talking about the same group of people ...

Arfa



No we are not talking about the same group of people.

I've been working within the Pro DJ/Club community since 1991. I understand
it, and love a great deal about it.


It's a shame that so many are prepared to label DJ's with that "scum of the
earth" tag, whilst never actually knowing how that part of the Universe
actually operates.



Gareth.

 

[Trevor Wilson]

On 22/02/2015 9:13 AM, Arfa Daily wrote:

** Crikey !!!

AD must deal with a whole different kind of "DJ" to the ones I come
across.

Words like "tight-arse", "con-artist", "hassler" and "whinger" cover
most of them while the rest are straight out crims or drug dealers.

**That has been my experience with these scum too. When I've dealt
with them, I have felt an uncontrollable need to check my valuables
and have a good bath.


--
Trevor Wilson

Then there must be something really odd about the profession in your
country. I have found them to be nothing of the sort here. Either that,
or we're not talking about the same group of people ...

Arfa

**I suspect the pros in the UK are quite different to those over here.
Drugs are inextricably intertwined with discos here. The money in drugs
far exceeds that of how much professional DJs are paid. Still, I am well
out of that scene at my stage in life. My dealings with DJs has been at
what i would term 'serious amateur' level only. IOW: The people have a
weekday job and DJ at night or on weekends for a bit of extra cash. I
have seen the odd Pommy DJ turn up on the nightly news and they are
treated at rock stars by the young fools who imagine they have talent
(musicians are the ones who generally have the talent, not the guys who
play their music). Then again, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy.

[ASIDE]: I recall visiting a trendy disco about 2 decades ago. Curious
about the music, I asked the DJ what it was (I could sorta recognise
it). "Oh, that's a 45RPM Visage single. We're playing it at 33. Cool, huh?"

It's a very weird industry.

--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
http://www.avast.com

 

[Gareth Magennis]

Look, here's a GIRL!

Doing some stuff on that, there, Pioneer things!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU0wTLnsSXU


Blimey.




Gareth.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Phil Allison" <pallison49@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a52d1b28-264b-4e9e-90ef-1ca3bec05d69@googlegroups.com...

Trevor Wilson wrote:

Phil Allison wrote:

** Crikey !!!

AD must deal with a whole different kind of "DJ" to the ones I come
across.

Words like "tight-arse", "con-artist", "hassler" and "whinger" cover
most of them while the rest are straight out crims or drug dealers.

**That has been my experience with these scum too. When I've dealt with
them, I have felt an uncontrollable need to check my valuables and have
a good bath.


** Back in the mid 70s when disco took off in Australia, I had quite a few
customers who hired out DJ equipment - some of these systems were large
enough to double as a PA for bands.

The failure rate of the amplifiers was very high and so I got plenty of
repair work on SAE 2200s & 2400s, Phase Linear 400s & 700s and Yamaha 2200
power amplifiers and many others.

I even designed a good quality DJ mixer that was produced in quantity and
sold as JAI Sound.

When the disco craze started to wane in the late 80s, things turned nasty
and a lot of crims entered the business - mostly as DJs who has bought
their own gear.

One of my regular customers disposed of all his DJ hire stock cos he was
getting constant death threats from competitors. It was that nasty.

Disco use is the hardest use of amps and speakers I know of - add take
away hire to almost anyone and you have a disaster looing for somewhere to
happen.

IME, DJs are equipment wreckers and thoroughly nasty people.



.... Phil

Wrong type of "DJs" Phil. The proper pros are not part time 'record
spinners' in discos. They are entertainers that create tracks 'on the fly'
and inhabit the club scene. The mixers that they use are altogether
different from the sorts of items that are used by bands or disco DJs. The
Pioneer CDJs are nothing at all like a conventional CD player, or anything
that a disco or birthday party DJ would use. They have buttons and features
that I wouldn't pretend to understand properly. Some systems even make use
of time-code CDs that drive external software to allow digitally recorded
material stored as MP3 (or whatever) files on the computer to be scratched
and mixed and beat synchronised as though they were physical media -
specifically vinyl records.

You are even out of date - at least in this country, anyway - with the way
that the disco scene that you are talking about works. Most 'proper' DJs of
the 'record spinner' variety that work the mobile disco scene for parties
and weddings and so on, are these days older people, not kids or drug
dealers. The better ones don't even use CD players any more, let alone
conventional phono decks, which are of course still used by the pro club
DJs, Technics SL1200 series decks being the norm for that work.

I have a colleague that has been doing mobile disco work for more than 30
years. All of his source material is now carried on a laptop, and is
controlled by very expensive professional software that was originally
written for use by radio stations. He can compile playlists off-line based
on what the client requests in advance, and the type of gig that it is -
birthday, wedding etc. When 'live' requests are made, just like when people
phone in to radio shows, he can select the requested track from the massive
archive that he has, and drag it into the playlist in seconds. It's all way
way more sophisticated than it was back in the 80s and 90s.

Arfa

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Trevor Wilson" <trevor@SPAMBLOCKrageaudio.com.au> wrote in message
news:cksg7qFsp5nU1@mid.individual.net...

On 22/02/2015 9:13 AM, Arfa Daily wrote:



** Crikey !!!

AD must deal with a whole different kind of "DJ" to the ones I come
across.

Words like "tight-arse", "con-artist", "hassler" and "whinger" cover
most of them while the rest are straight out crims or drug dealers.

**That has been my experience with these scum too. When I've dealt
with them, I have felt an uncontrollable need to check my valuables
and have a good bath.


--
Trevor Wilson

Then there must be something really odd about the profession in your
country. I have found them to be nothing of the sort here. Either that,
or we're not talking about the same group of people ...

Arfa

**I suspect the pros in the UK are quite different to those over here.
Drugs are inextricably intertwined with discos here. The money in drugs
far exceeds that of how much professional DJs are paid. Still, I am well
out of that scene at my stage in life. My dealings with DJs has been at
what i would term 'serious amateur' level only. IOW: The people have a
weekday job and DJ at night or on weekends for a bit of extra cash. I have
seen the odd Pommy DJ turn up on the nightly news and they are treated at
rock stars by the young fools who imagine they have talent (musicians are
the ones who generally have the talent, not the guys who play their
music). Then again, maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy.

[ASIDE]: I recall visiting a trendy disco about 2 decades ago. Curious
about the music, I asked the DJ what it was (I could sorta recognise it).
"Oh, that's a 45RPM Visage single. We're playing it at 33. Cool, huh?"

It's a very weird industry.

--
Trevor Wilson

We are talking apples and oranges here, Trevor. We are not talking about
'discos' and part time people standing behind a pair of decks at a birthday
party at all when referring to the pro DJ community. These are not 'record
spinners' but professional entertainers on the club scene. You clearly don't
understand what they do, or how much they get paid for doing it. A friend of
mine's son is one such DJ, and quite famous. He is most certainly not any
kind of "scum" , "con artist", "hassler" or any of the other derogatory
terms that you are leveling at these people. They are not "crims" or "drug
dealers" either. The amount of money that he can command for a single spot
during an evening, is eye watering compared to what the likes of you and I
can earn in a week.

And they do not just play other people's music, and to suggest that they
have no talent is just your total misunderstanding talking. They actually
create new and unique tracks 'on the fly' and out of their own heads using a
combination of two or more existing sources, sampling, mixing, looping and
many other techniques. If you think that they have no talent, then I suggest
that you try watching one at work. I would defy you to even work out what
they are doing, let alone be able to reproduce it. The reason that they are
treated as 'rock stars' is because, in their own sphere of entertainment,
they are ...

Arfa

 

[Mark Zacharias]

"John-Del" <ohger1s@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7633b5f5-a349-4ef1-be2a-c8558f4e960a@googlegroups.com...
On Saturday, February 21, 2015 at 6:27:41 AM UTC-5, Mark Zacharias wrote:

Basically it acts like the clamper magnet is much too strong. When the
mech
goes to lift up the disc off the clamper, it encounters too much
resistance
and the white nylon rack gear at the top slips and ratchets. The disc
cannot
eject until I help it by lifting up the clamper with my finger. Requires
quite a bit of extra "help".

Any chance a spacer is missing on the clamper or turntable? Years ago I
ran into something >similar to this and I think a stick-on rubber disc
slipped off the turntable allowing the space >between the clamper magnet
and the turntable to be reduced increasing the clamping force.

I looked for any missing or damaged felt spacer - no such luck. I'll have to
get back into it - what a time-waster. Maybe I'll get lucky.

mz

 

A buddy of mine, we call him the Colonel, is a high end DJ. We call him the Colonel after Colonel Flagg on MASH because he is nuts. His olady finally left him, but years ago other buddy asks her "Why don't you leave him then ?" and she said "Are you kidding ? I can see him on top of garage roofs with binoculars and shit". Ex marine, and works for the post office. (I shit you not) Twenty years ago he was getting like $800 a night to DJ, and most of the time it as cash so it was tax free.

He had my other buddy simply watch the van. He did all the loading and unloading himself, considered it a good workout. (yup, Colonel Flagg) Then Jack, technically "working security" got free drinks at the wedding or whatever event it was. But really, it would be impractical to relock the van with every trip up the elevator or whatever.

The Colonel used to have thousands of CD, and literally sat there and ripped them all, put in all the info like genre and all that and put it on TWO PCs. One ran, the other was an exact duplicate and even loaded with that night's playlists. And he didn't use a DJ machine, he didn't to it like that. Some of these jobs were for the wealthy, weddings and such and it might be all classical music, or polkas (ugh) or whatever.

For a DJ, probably the best thing you can do is put all that shit on PC. In fact Karaoke as well. I've seen that done. It's just a bit different software that's all. I saw it done on a laptop, and I was thinking about how some laptops have shit sound (mine does) but then I thought again - THIS IS KARAOKE, good sound and Karaoke are in two different universes.

Of course he had the LASERs and the fog machines. And this guy is like, well he is very gregarious and outgoing, but when you get to know him he a kind of obtuse. He is good at getting the little old Ladies up and dancing though, the crowd loves him, but then again, you know when he is in like that mode ? Well that's not a mode. Sometimes you want to shoot the guy.

Never got any audio work off him, he takes his stuff to Empirical downtown here. Little does he know that I now might have an in there and might just work there someday.

What I am finding right now is that people don't seem to understand what "line level" is in that business. Other day I got this reverb unit. Complaint is something wrong with the switches. Makes noise when switchihg modes etc.. I get it on the bench and I KNOW what I am doing by just playing a guitar through it, it is going to be noisy. Talk to the boss, then I found a mahual, just an owner's manual for it and there are lights, Like ay -40 dB or someting it lights green, changes to yellow at 0 and goes red if over, something like that. The guitar doesn't even light the light. I had to SHOW HIM. Grabbed an amp that has a proper effects loop and showed him.

I can see education is going to be part of this job.

And those two amps blowing at the same time, I am almost sure they did not disconnect one before connecting the other.

But then again I can't bitch, this sort of thing generates work for me. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't push the education too much...

 

[Gareth Magennis]

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message news:BcbGw.697349$gq5.528312@fx46.am4...



"Phil Allison" <pallison49@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a52d1b28-264b-4e9e-90ef-1ca3bec05d69@googlegroups.com...

Trevor Wilson wrote:

Phil Allison wrote:

** Crikey !!!

AD must deal with a whole different kind of "DJ" to the ones I come
across.

Words like "tight-arse", "con-artist", "hassler" and "whinger" cover
most of them while the rest are straight out crims or drug dealers.

**That has been my experience with these scum too. When I've dealt with
them, I have felt an uncontrollable need to check my valuables and have
a good bath.


** Back in the mid 70s when disco took off in Australia, I had quite a few
customers who hired out DJ equipment - some of these systems were large
enough to double as a PA for bands.

The failure rate of the amplifiers was very high and so I got plenty of
repair work on SAE 2200s & 2400s, Phase Linear 400s & 700s and Yamaha 2200
power amplifiers and many others.

I even designed a good quality DJ mixer that was produced in quantity and
sold as JAI Sound.

When the disco craze started to wane in the late 80s, things turned nasty
and a lot of crims entered the business - mostly as DJs who has bought
their own gear.

One of my regular customers disposed of all his DJ hire stock cos he was
getting constant death threats from competitors. It was that nasty.

Disco use is the hardest use of amps and speakers I know of - add take
away hire to almost anyone and you have a disaster looing for somewhere to
happen.

IME, DJs are equipment wreckers and thoroughly nasty people.



.... Phil

Wrong type of "DJs" Phil. The proper pros are not part time 'record
spinners' in discos. They are entertainers that create tracks 'on the fly'
and inhabit the club scene. The mixers that they use are altogether
different from the sorts of items that are used by bands or disco DJs. The
Pioneer CDJs are nothing at all like a conventional CD player, or anything
that a disco or birthday party DJ would use. They have buttons and features
that I wouldn't pretend to understand properly. Some systems even make use
of time-code CDs that drive external software to allow digitally recorded
material stored as MP3 (or whatever) files on the computer to be scratched
and mixed and beat synchronised as though they were physical media -
specifically vinyl records.

You are even out of date - at least in this country, anyway - with the way
that the disco scene that you are talking about works. Most 'proper' DJs of
the 'record spinner' variety that work the mobile disco scene for parties
and weddings and so on, are these days older people, not kids or drug
dealers. The better ones don't even use CD players any more, let alone
conventional phono decks, which are of course still used by the pro club
DJs, Technics SL1200 series decks being the norm for that work.

I have a colleague that has been doing mobile disco work for more than 30
years. All of his source material is now carried on a laptop, and is
controlled by very expensive professional software that was originally
written for use by radio stations. He can compile playlists off-line based
on what the client requests in advance, and the type of gig that it is -
birthday, wedding etc. When 'live' requests are made, just like when people
phone in to radio shows, he can select the requested track from the massive
archive that he has, and drag it into the playlist in seconds. It's all way
way more sophisticated than it was back in the 80s and 90s.

Arfa



You're not wrong there Arfa.

I am the Sound Engineer in a club in London. The main DJ now has his 8
hour sets on hard drive, using a rack mount hardware controller to select,
start and stop each track.
(There are two identical drives and 2 controllers in case something breaks)

We also have DJ's come in to play a small chillout set after the main event.
The majority of these now bring a Laptop with their music onboard, and
Traktor installed to play it.

The CDJ's and DJM's do indeed have a lot of features, particularly if you
want to Scratch, and add the onboard effects and filters, and have USB and
SD card sockets to read your entire music collection from a card, stick or
hard drive. Or you can actually put a CD in if you're really old skool!
(Could be a CD of mp3's, meaning a lot more than the 80 minutes of music
available on a CD)

Our club doesn't really play that kind of Scratchy stuff, so we don't have
CDJ's, but when we put live acts on, we will hire some in if requested along
with the digital mixing desk and wedge monitor system.

I control the desk with an ipad - that is well cool and a damn sight quicker
and easier than navigating the layers, controls and parameters on the desk
itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0hOXqMgcAU



Gareth.

 

[Gareth Magennis]

wrote in message
news:98af54a1-136d-4dd1-a9d5-23c0eb83445e@googlegroups.com...

A buddy of mine, we call him the Colonel, is a high end DJ. We call him
the Colonel after Colonel Flagg on MASH because he is nuts. His olady
finally left him, but years ago other buddy asks her "Why don't you leave
him then ?" and she said "Are you kidding ? I can see him on top of garage
roofs with binoculars and shit". Ex marine, and works for the post office.
(I shit you not) Twenty years ago he was getting like $800 a night to DJ,
and most of the time it as cash so it was tax free.

He had my other buddy simply watch the van. He did all the loading and
unloading himself, considered it a good workout. (yup, Colonel Flagg) Then
Jack, technically "working security" got free drinks at the wedding or
whatever event it was. But really, it would be impractical to relock the van
with every trip up the elevator or whatever.

The Colonel used to have thousands of CD, and literally sat there and ripped
them all, put in all the info like genre and all that and put it on TWO PCs.
One ran, the other was an exact duplicate and even loaded with that night's
playlists. And he didn't use a DJ machine, he didn't to it like that. Some
of these jobs were for the wealthy, weddings and such and it might be all
classical music, or polkas (ugh) or whatever.

For a DJ, probably the best thing you can do is put all that shit on PC. In
fact Karaoke as well. I've seen that done. It's just a bit different
software that's all. I saw it done on a laptop, and I was thinking about how
some laptops have shit sound (mine does) but then I thought again - THIS IS
KARAOKE, good sound and Karaoke are in two different universes.

Of course he had the LASERs and the fog machines. And this guy is like, well
he is very gregarious and outgoing, but when you get to know him he a kind
of obtuse. He is good at getting the little old Ladies up and dancing
though, the crowd loves him, but then again, you know when he is in like
that mode ? Well that's not a mode. Sometimes you want to shoot the guy.

Never got any audio work off him, he takes his stuff to Empirical downtown
here. Little does he know that I now might have an in there and might just
work there someday.

What I am finding right now is that people don't seem to understand what
"line level" is in that business. Other day I got this reverb unit.
Complaint is something wrong with the switches. Makes noise when switchihg
modes etc. I get it on the bench and I KNOW what I am doing by just playing
a guitar through it, it is going to be noisy. Talk to the boss, then I found
a mahual, just an owner's manual for it and there are lights, Like ay -40 dB
or someting it lights green, changes to yellow at 0 and goes red if over,
something like that. The guitar doesn't even light the light. I had to SHOW
HIM. Grabbed an amp that has a proper effects loop and showed him.

I can see education is going to be part of this job.

And those two amps blowing at the same time, I am almost sure they did not
disconnect one before connecting the other.

But then again I can't bitch, this sort of thing generates work for me.
Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't push the education too much...




You do tend to get a problem when amateur DJ's try and run their own sound
system.
If you know nothing about running a Sound System, and most DJ's don't,
because they are DJ's, not Sound Engineers, you will usually make it sound
shite before blowing it up a lot.

Unfortunately trying to educate them how to stop making it sound shite and
blowing stuff up is usually futile.




Gareth.

 

[Arfa Daily]

But then again I can't bitch, this sort of thing generates work for me.
Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't push the education too much...

But again, these people are 'record spinners', not the type of pro DJ that
uses Pioneer DJ equipment ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tm_ijdgsJ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH5mfHrtiXU

You do tend to get a problem when amateur DJ's try and run their own sound
system.
If you know nothing about running a Sound System, and most DJ's don't,
because they are DJ's, not Sound Engineers, you will usually make it
sound shite before blowing it up a lot.

Unfortunately trying to educate them how to stop making it sound shite and
blowing stuff up is usually futile.




Gareth.

Yes indeed. It is impossible to get these people to understand the
difference between input level and master level, and many amplifiers and
bass drivers are wrecked by them being square-waved as a result. On the
other hand, it's not so much of a problem on the club DJ scene where the PA
that's being jacked into by the resident or guest DJs, is being looked after
by a sound man like yourself, who knows far more about this stuff than them,
or probably most of us ...

Arfa

 

Heya,

On Thursday, 19 February 2015 20:25:44 UTC, Gareth Magennis wrote:
> I'm sick of this shit.

I suggest switching it off for a while, let if cool down, if it
continues to behave erratically hit something with it

Someone brings me a Pioneer mixer or CDJ to repair, and I need to order
spares. Get this. A KNOB costs Ł15.
How do they get away with this?
The switches and pots I need cost more than this.

you've lost that lovin' feelin':
http://knobfeel.co.uk/

erotic, yet safe for work!

I've looked at 3D printers as an alternative, but from the few samples I've
seen, the plastic is rock hard and not suitable for a comfy knob, and I
don't think its possible to produce a grey knob with a white line pointer
anyway.

The Pioneer ones I want are squidgy.

and they won't even go up to 11!? for the hobbyist a layer of Sugru might do the trick, but I think the "scum bag djs" below would probably send round their biggest bouncer to explain how "sensitive" their "business associate" was, finger by finger

and for a thread that starts "ISotS", I'd like to re-harsh your mellows by suggesting that "selectors" leave their knobs alone and just play some nice tunes. . .

you fightin? I'm asking! ;P

--
http://tenyen.net/