Hi Damien, welcome to the forums.
Never mind about being long winded, I am mr. wall of text myself. The only risk is that people might not read (all of) it 😛
You’ll find plenty of information on here. The subject of a starter controller is somewhat of a weekly recurring theme here. The search function should provide you with some posts that are relevant to your question.
The article on DJay Pro over at the blog has some interesting information as well.
As far as investing time (and potentially money) into mastering Pioneer gear goes, we are pretty outspoken here in that it is yesterday’s technology. If you can do your thing on a controller, you can do it on Pioneer gear (which essentially is still just two CD-players and an analogue mixer at the end of the day). RekordBox will help you there if need be. Most rekordbox enabled players can be used as (HID) controllers for DJ software by hooking them up to your laptop with USB, making for a nice hybrid setup where you use Pioneer players and mixers, but with your favorite DJ software (beats the h*ll out of RekordBox imho).
Having said that, there has been an enormous surge last year of clubs/venues that have openened up to DJs bringing their own gear (i.e. controller/laptop) and that facilitate that by providing room in the booth and easy access to the PA.
I’ll usually carry a memory stick in my wallet with a modest set in RekordBox, cause you never know where you end up that you might want to/are asked to play, but 99% of my gigs I will have my laptop out and mostly my controller as well.
Hope that helps some.
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