So you love reggae and you want to make it your career, but you can’t play an instrument or sing. What do you do? You do the same thing everyone else in your situation does. And I’m not talking only reggae fans. I’m talking people who like any genre of music but have no actual talent. What do they do? They become DJs.
I’m not saying that every DJ lacks all musical ability. That is obviously far from the truth. But people who lack musical ability and still want to get into music, generally choose to be DJs.
You can be a pretty decent reggae DJ without any musical talent whatsoever. All you need to do is play one song after another and get yourself a coffee cup for the road, so that you can always have coffee at the ready, wherever you are.. Obviously, the best DJs do know what they’re doing in terms of musical theory, but someone playing at some small local bar or playing weddings or other functions like that, really just needs to play one record after the other.
These days you obviously only need a laptop or even just an iPod to be a DJ. But I would recommend getting an actual set of turntables. And you don’t have to spend a ton of money and get the best record players money can buy. You can get some great turntables for a couple of hundred dollars. Actually, you can get a great turntable for under a hundred dollars that works really well. That said, the record player I would recommend for any beginning DJ, including reggae DJs, is the Stanton T62. Read that review and you’ll see what I mean.
The Stanton T62 is a great little DJ turntable. Sure, it plays records like any good record players, but this one is specifically tailored for DJs. It is extra sturdy and it has functions that make it well-suited to whatever you might do with it. It is great for scratching thanks to a straight tone arm. It features a direct drive motor with a high torque, meaning it won’t slow down on you. It comes with a high-quality slipmat and a great Stanton cartridge. Not only those two, but all components, are high-quality.
It has two start and stop switches and a pitch control fader this makes it great for battle DJing, which is pretty popular among reggae DJs. The fader allows you to change the tempo and the pitch, which helps when mixing together records. It has RCA outputs allowing you to hook it up to an external stereo system, if you just want to use it at home to listen to vinyl albums.
The best feature, though, is the price. It only costs around $150. This is a lot cheaper than most turntables and the quality is on par with those other ones. Only the cheapest audio technica player is cheaper than this one, but it lacks a lot of the features. The best audio technica for DJs costs over a hundred dollars more. And the Technics turntables everybody used to use cost many hundreds of dollars more. In fact, they are over $1000 more.
If you’re looking to get started as a reggae DJ, I always suggest getting a pair of turntables and learning to do it the right way, the traditional way. You can always DJ later on your laptop, but there’s just something really cool about playing actual vinyl albums, about mixing one album into the other and actually feeling the turntables under your fingers.
That is real DJing and whether you’re playing reggae music or electronic music or any other kind of music, nothing beats the feeling of real record player decks under your fingers. Trust me on this, the Stanton T 62 is the best option for you as a beginner. It will grow with you and be with you for a long time.
