I've seen these decks in the clubs quite a lot and they looked like the biz and pretty simple to use. Most DJs use a laptop and 100s of MP3s which personally I think is cheating and takes the art away from DJing. Being a producer I do like my musical gadgets so I popped this one on my Christmas list a few years back and was glad to see that it was in my Christmas stocking one morning ☺ I love my hip hop and this seemed to be the right way to go for me

The overall size of the deck is 45.3 cm x 36 cm x 16.2 cm and weighs just 11 kg. I now have this hooked up in my studio to my Denon amp and I love it to bits. The first thing that I noticed was that the motor was full-bodied, I guess it has to be for when the pro DJs are abusing it all the time. It reaches it's sfull speed of a track with in point seven seconds with is unbelieveable. The sound quality is impeccable and the design is ok but not too pretty, and quality is extremely robust and could no doubt cope with its fair share of knocks, although I don't take this out clubbing as I'm not a pro DJ. The upper part of the deck has a metal body which is nice and robust whilst the base is made of a superior rubber and 4 rubber feet which will take the knocks that a deck would be used to in the pro world of DJing.

Beat matching i.e. running two tracks simultaneously is a dream can be done very accurately with the +/-8 fader. Other controls include analogue pitch reset, tone arm assembly, anti skating, motor, brake, and height adjust. Needless to say it comes with all the instructions that you need to get going. plus audio and power cables. All contacts are gold plated There's a greats feature that tells you how the motor is running which is on the on switch panel, when te=he white led spots are at zero it means that the pitch of the track you're playing is at zero, as the pitch increases then you'll see a number of red dots

The arm height for me needed to be reduced in order to bring it inline with the surface of the record itself. And the rubber matt isn't ideal for me as it's too thick. I did manage to break the pitch slider but managed to replace it very cheaply for £15 myself. I believe that Techics don't make these decks anymore, so it's a case of hunting around for a good secondhand one.

Purchased from Ebay for £199 plus delivery 5 years ago.