Chuck Van Eekelen

Hi Zen, welcome to the forums. Thanks for the introduction.

Hope the Lab will be everything you expect it to.

Enjoy your time here. Lots of stuff to read and comment on 🙂

A new Mixtrack 3 Pro is less than 200 euro. A good sound (which needs to be 4-channel (main and cue)) will start around the 100 euro mark.

I’d consider selling my current MT and buying the Pro, either new or used, and have the sound card inside. Much easier.

Hi and welcome to the forums.

Good introduction.

As for owning gear, I am a big fan of renting in the early days when you don’t have a steady stream of gigs and/or a wide range of gigs. With rental you can always fit your offer to what the customer wants and what his budget is.

Also, be sure you are the one to arrange everything. Don’t send your customer to the rental place. You charge the same as the rental company, but you ask them to give you a kick-back/discount for getting them the order. I usually get between 10-25%. So even renting gear I makes some money.

To be honest, I personally think that the only reason your musical style is relevant is to see if it fits with the venue. Also, I doubt any tape (however long or short) will be incentive for someone to contact you and book you.

Be focused, pick the clubs/venues you think would fit with your style of DJ-ing and music. Go out to them for a while to test that hypothesis (i.e. was I right in assuming I’d fit in here?). While you are there, go early or stay late (or both if you have the stamina). While it’s still early or while it’s slowing down, make contact with people like the bar staff, the door man, the resident DJ, the manager, the owner. Not to shove yourself down their throat, but just so they get to know you. After knowing them for a bit, drop the fact that you are a DJ and the reason you are coming to the place is that you like it a lot and you would really like to play there sometime. Could they let you know if something opens up. Leave your card with them so they know how to contact you. You can invite the bar staff to come see you at the place you are already playing on their night off for example.

In short, network, get personally involved. Of course, make sure if you have a website or facebook page that they can find some vids and audio of you playing, some bio background. But that is AFTER they know (about) you, not because they are looking for someone.

Hope that helps some. My three cents worth as usual.

All good questions and most answered here on the forums (many times) before. Use the search functionality to find some recent stuff.

All of these questions get answered in the video course “How To Digital DJ Fast” and Phil Morse’s book “Rock The Dancefloor”.

While we are a site dedicated to helping DIGITAL DJs (and that does involve some kind of DJ software and controller/laptop use), all the techniques described can easily be carried over to CDJ/Mixer DJ-ing.

The course has a nice price, is fully money-back guaranteed and is available for life. The book is nice too, but you’d miss out on all the nice video examples.

To begin with, the budget you describe won’t get you a decent set of PA speakers for indoor, let alone outdoor. QTX and many other such brands produce speakers that, based on price alone, can not be any good. Especially if you calculate they not only are a powered speaker, but they have bluetooth, built-in mixer and even two handheld microphones. Just to give you an idea, a SINGLE wireless handheld mic from a somewhat decent manufacturer will cost about 150 euros and that is really the bottom of the barrel. Anything from renowned brands like shure and sennheiser will start in the 350 euro range and quickly go upwards.

If you plan on charging for a gig and the gear you bring, the customer -imho- has a right to get the best possible quality for his money. These speakers cost about the same as the rental of 2 professional quality speakers 2 times. That should tell you something.

The golden rule in PA is “you get what you pay for” and there are no shortcuts to that. Recent years have seen an explosion in 2.1 systems (small sub with two also relatively small satellites) and 2.2 systems (two subs with matching tops, often in so-called array setup). These systems give a relatively high bang for the buck, while still being compact. They outperform their size effectively.

Now, the QTX speakers are 100W RMS output. Leaving the sound quality out of it (which I would have serious doubts about) as well as build quality (another troubling thing) and just looking at the numbers, you’d have two for 200W. You need 5W rms per person on average for regular indoor use (so no headbanging loud stuff, just party level). That would give you enough “power” to play for about 40 people. Outdoor is at least DOUBLE that, so you’d have power to play for 20 people.

The site claims up to 10 hours battery life. But I can tell you from experience that -even with new batteries- the battery life quickly drops as power consumption goes up. At full power you could be looking at less than 2 hours.

There is one brand of mobile speakers I know, from Germany, called Fohhn that produces high end gear. Good battery life even at full volume, but no big bass speakers (these soak up power). Sound quality is great and especially for speech and BACKGROUND music they are hard to beat. Their speakers start at 1200+ euro a piece or so.

Putting all that info together, I’d say you are not ready to own your own PA yet. Go play out, make some money, set it apart and figure out how often you need them, what features and power they should have and then start shopping.
Even then, I’d still opt for generator and normal powered speakers, all you need is to keep the tank topped off to keep them going, no matter how long the party. No chance of forgetting to charge them properly and showing up with empty speakers.

Til that moment, either rent (battery-powered or with a generator) the PA that matches the size and location of your party. You’ll show up with pro-quality gear and can make a buck or two from the kick-back you can negotiate with the rental company. Generally you can get between 10-25% discount/kick-back. And all that without investing a dime of yourself.

Just my 3 cents as usual.

Hi there and welcome to the forums. Enjoy your time here!