THIS ALWAYS COMES UP. Well to tell you the truth the gear is what you make it.I ve used belt drive turntables and made them sound good when i was scratching. The more expensive gear that i use is the TECHNICS 1200MK2. The best dj turntable made. Its rugged sounds good and boy it can scratch up a storm.If you got the dough buy them cuz you wont go back but thet run about $400 each. Also youll need carts(needles) for your tables. Ive used the stanon 500al,trackmasters,discmasters (all junk) but im currently using ORTOFON NIGHTCLUB & boy this babys are the bomb!! I use cds and vinyl and you cant tell what format im using when im mixing cuz they sound so freakin good. But my new venture is the AMERICAN AUDIO PRO SCRATCH 2 CD PLAYERS. I love em. you can remix on the fly plus 8 onboard digital efx. cant go wrong. My choice of the mixer is the AMERICAN AUDIO QD5. Ive used gemini,and the famous vestax 05 which is good but the qd5 is the ultimate.I do alot of scratching(duh!) and i was always tired of buying replacement crossfaders but not on this baby.ive owned it for 2 years and havent replaced it once where as the gemini mixer was every 2 months the vestax once a year. But it gets better american audio guaranties for the life the crossfader no one else in the industry does this.I know that the qd5 mk2 is out now which is the same but black and cheaper priced.I dont know if the honor the crossfader warranty but ill find out. Anyways the mixer has 3kills plus a 3 band eq for each channel.OOOH ALMOST FORGOT!! THE CROSSFADER IS SO SMOOTH IF YOU TILT THE MIXER IT WILL SLIDE BY ITSELF. I BLEW ON THE FADER AND IT MOVES THATS HOW SENSITIVE IT IS.But you can adjust the conture of each fader not just your croosfader which is great cuz i use the up and down fader to scratch also. The mixer has a light output control in which you can feed your sound to a chase controller. Its got balanced I/O's and rca's and a dual visual vu meter which you can monitor the siganls output before you open it up on the crossfader. And the bonus is the mic its got bass & treble controls plus a button that lowers the music automaticaly and raises back up when you push it again. WELL THAT'S IT FOR NOW MY NEXT BLOG WILL BE ON DJ CASES AND SPEAKERS AND AMPS. MORE TO COME......D.J.JAMES