Pioneer CDJ Guidebook: A Comparison and History of CDJs and XDJs

Good stuff, though it's missing the newest model, the CDJ-3000.

This is great and very thorough! But it's nearly 4 years old, should have a (2018) appended to the title please.

I suspect it varies a lot by genre and possibly also geographic location?

For house, techno, drum and bass, etc I typically see a lot of Pioneer gear, used with digital storage, not CDs. I still see Technics turntables too, but with real vinyl, depending on the DJ. The vast majority of the stuff I listen to doesn't involve scratching / DMC-style turntablism though.

Getting into djing was incredible. We had a friend working in a local music shop, they had gigantic rooms filled with guitars and pianos, but once djing became a thing they started dedicated a little angle to pioneer and Cdjs.

They let us playing on 2 cdjs 1000, with an Allen Heat mixer. Deadmau5 was the most played there, 2010 was an amazing year for electronic music. People kept increasing, things started breaking and we had to find something else. I've worked an entire summer 10 hours per day to afford two CDJ 900, then I bought a Reloop DJM and started organizing parties.

Those years will always remain in my heart. The energy, the people, I just think that some experiences will stay within your soul for the rest of your life. But if there's something I'll never understand is why the business world behind music and entertainment in general is so rot and broken. Maybe drugs, maybe the desire to get easy money, most of the people involved in parties just want to squeeze people for money, from location owners to PRs. If you don't have the guts to enter this "Mors tua Vita mea" cycle you're getting ripped off and left behind.

Your only hope was finding those two or three trusted friends and fight together against the rest of the world, until the last breath.

God, I miss those times.

I still have a collection of older CDJs. A lot of my friends bought into the CDJ100s, but I abhorred those decks. Coming from vinyl, they just did not have a feel that felt good at all. Once the CDJ1000s came out, I finally felt that the decks had a feel that didn't feel gross. If you've never been a vinyl DJ, it's really hard to describe what it was that just wasn't right. The CDJs just felt light, cheap, plasticy, etc. Everyone felt this way, and that's why they kept changing until they got closest with the CDJ1000 and later.

To this day, I still prefer to play vinyl. There's just something about putting your hands directly on the medium. Yes, needles, scratches, pops, dust, all degrade the sound blah blah, but I still love it regardless.