Nightmare gig for a new DJ

[Lorenzo1950]

Have you ever done a job where you had constant problems with the equipment? I have done some dj work at a local studio with an awful stereo system. Sometimes I can barely see the display to know which track is playing. How do you prevent this type of job from being a total failure? I guess one solution is to bring your own sound system.
Thank you.

[KevinSchaper]

I guess one solution is to bring your own sound system.

A really good solution.

I definitely see the benefit of laptop djing from this perspective.. you can have your music, cd players, mixer and even sound processing all in one lil box - and venue owners won't get their feelings hurt because you don't wanna use their garage sale DJ setup. (not that I'm speaking from experience.. )

[yedancer]

I once had a situation in a venue I was running, in which the DJ's laptop was giving such horrible feedback that we had to stop the music for like 10 minutes. Thinking it was OUR equipment that was the problem, we frantically ran around troubleshooting our stuff, except that nothing fixed the problem. It wasn't until a bunch of the customers had left in frustration that we discovered it was the DJ's RCA cable that was causing the problems. Talk about a nightmare.

[Lawrence]

The CD player at a local Austin weekly dance is completely skittish: it inconsistently cues at the beginning of a song, five seconds into the song, seven seconds into a song, two seconds into a song, or whatever. Really annoying. Although it still throws me off occasionally, I just take care to not let the previous song go down below 30 seconds before I verify that the song is at the start.

In other words, reduce the amount of time you take to select songs so as to leave more time to account for faulty equipment.

[kbuxton]

My worse experience (so far) has been showing up to DJ the usual Tuesday venue and having one of the two cd players make everything sounds like the chipmunks. Eventually one of the dancers (who djs non-swing stuff so was totally sympathetic) drove home and brought me a portable cd player to plug in.

(and yes, I checked the pitch control)

[Roy]

One venue in Chicago had one broken CD player and the other CD player skipped on almost all burnt CD's, good thing I had some originals.

For non swing nightmares, I was at a party once where the DJ and one of the patrons got in a shouting match over what he was playing and she threw beer on him and it splashed onto the equipment.

Also another non-swing event, at a club here in Chicago called Smart Bar, which is a basement club with hard core dancers. Water leaked through the ceiling right onto the sound system and destroyed thier expensive system right in the middle of busy night. The music was off for a good 30 minutes until they could get the entire system replaced.

[Toon Town Dave]

I would say a nightmare for anyone ... or at least a royal PITA.

Our former Monday night venue started out with a really good sound system and a couple of twins that were hired as the DJs (it was a typical night club). They took very good care of the equipment and in fact they were absolutely paranoid about us being allowed to take over the DJ booth on Mondays. Eventually they got tired of the owners cutting back their hours and left. The new "DJ" didn't give a rats @$$ about the equipment. The venue changes owners at the beginning of the year and by that time, the DJ booth was a sty. We were happy when the dual-deck Dennon CD player only skipped on every 2nd CD. Add to that broken headphones, the ones that replaced the pair with a blown speaker.

[Skippy]

At our local gigs there are three of us that share a 3hr slot every second week. Yes that's all the venues we have at the moment

one mixes from cd to cd picking songs as he goes.
one uses a portable music player
and I use a combination of a portable music player and cds.

only on one occasion have we had dramas and that was because the goose djing pop crap before us pulled a plug he shouldn't have.