When it comes to gear, DJs can be notoriously difficult to please. It’s not enough that the controller works perfectly. It should also feel good in your hands and hopefully make you look like a feature in the room. But the road to a popular DJ controller is paved with duds, bombs, booby traps and just plain old poor design. Here are a few that never took off.
The Guitar Fighter
DJ Amp Live is probably best known for the legal issues around his Radiohead In Rainbows remix (he won the case, sort of). But then there’s the Guitar Fighter, a DJ controller that was never released commercially but turned a few heads along the way. It’s basically the child of a Guitar Hero controller and an MPC. Check it out.
The Pacemaker
There have been a couple of attempts to make standalone DJ controllers. The Pacemaker was one of them. Back in 2006, the iPod-like device was brought out. The Pacemaker would let you toggle two tracks with just one hand, using circular touch pads and ribbon strips. After delays, the expensive ($700) device was released - just in time to be made obsolete by the smartphone explosion. It’s now an app. Check it out.
Otto
Otto was a wonderfully simple circular beat slicer device. The touchable device controlled its own dedicated software and worked by cutting and rearranging a single sample into little pieces. Otto was a one-trick-pony which used the dot matrix style of coloured lights to play back the sample. Tactile, simple and unfortunately also now defunct. Check it out.
Whatever gear you play - old or new - DJ Courses Online hooks you you up with solid tutorials that both show and tell how to get the most out of it. Check out one of the online DJ courses today.