vestax vrx 2000

tripledoubletripledouble 7,636 Posts
edited December 2012 in Strut Central
anyone have experience with these things?
worth acquiring if i have the opportunity to buy one cheap?

  Comments


  • i remember when they came out, is the acetate/vinyl stock they used still available though?

  • i have a failed business plan that revolved around that machine...lol never had any experience with it, but did mad research on it..

  • hmmm...good point speakmumbs. im not sure

    cityboy...whats your impression on the quality of the machine? would it be useful at all in this day and age? if the vestax acetates are still available

  • Over the years on various forums I've asked about this vested machine and not yet found anyone who has experience with one.
    One point I've seen raised is that to learn to properly press vinyl is an art, some might say a lost art, I buy a lots of new releases and the amount of bad pressings is really disheartening considering the price of wax these days. So to expect to get something decent sounding out of one of these vestax machines might be very challenging.
    That's if the discs are still available.

    Shorty after the machine was first launched I stumbled across a kind of training center on how to use these things in a Tokyo department store, I went back about 8 months latter and it was already gone.

    I'd love for this machine to work well, I'd be alll over it.


  • FrankFrank 2,370 Posts
    My guess is that this machine is crap.

    1. It looks like crap

    2. It's made by Vestax

    3. The retail price for these things was 9 grand and now you can't sell one for 4 grand, brand new in the box and with 100 blank discs:

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vestax-VRX-2000-vinyl-cutter-made-japan-/400229878613

    Not even on the second try:
    http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vestax-VRX-2000-vinyl-cutter-made-in-japan-/400233001254

    4.If this thing wouldn't be crap, numerous affordable dubplate cutting services would have popped up when it first hit the market.

  • i don't think it not catching on has to do with the quality of the machine or mastering. you are essentially burning a record instead of a cd, but at the time this was released, so was serato, final scratch etc etc.

    if you wanted to demo tracks while playing out at a gig, you'd just throw an mp3 on your harddrive and use your control vinyl. even if you had a vinyl only mentality, you'd just get some dubplates made and save tons of money.

    this machine would not be for doing small runs of songs to sell. the vinyl it uses isn't acetate and isn't exactly vinyl. they say it wears out in about 90% of the time that a normal piece of vinyl would under the same use.

    it really boils down to the purpose that this machine would be used for. i can't see it being useful for any practical application, and you wouldn't be able to compete with a richard simpson mastering type establishment that has years of experience doing dubplates.

  • when this machine was offered to me (for under a thousand) before hearing any details, i was hoping they were talking about an big old heavy lathe. when i saw it was this thing i got disappointed and pretty much had frank's reaction in my head vestax=flimsy,light

    still, good stuff. and interesting at how badly they timed the release of this thing. oops!

  • Frank said:
    My guess is that this machine is crap.

    1. It looks like crap

    2. It's made by Vestax


    My vestax turntables are a million times better than the technics pair i used to own.
    Their products do have some questionable designs though.

  • vestax for a long time was at the cutting edge of dj culture, from the partnership with the dj's themselves. turntables with crazy pitch control, to mixers with new features that made sense for practical applications, to off the wall shit like the QFO. i can't be mad at the strides they made during that time.

    i don't know if there was a restructuring of their company, or they were bought out by someone who doesn't have the same ideals, maybe it was even a shift to laptop djing and controller culture, but they haven't been the same for a little while now.

    from what i can gather from my dj friends, where everyone once had a vestax 05-07, everyone now owns a rane and good old technics.

  • DJ_EnkiDJ_Enki 6,471 Posts
    speakmumbles said:
    from what i can gather from my dj friends, where everyone once had a vestax 05-07, everyone now owns a rane and good old technics.

    Yeah, it used to be for scratch DJs that Vestax was the only game in town. The 05 was pretty much industry standard; if you were broke like me, you got the 06 (my first "real" mixer after beating those Gemini Scratchmaster joints to death); if you were really doing it, you copped the 07 when it came out. But Rane ended up eating Vestax's lunch with the 56 (which I still rock--it's pretty much the perfect mixer to me). I remember hearing that as Rane was on the come-up with the 54 and just as the 56 was about to hit, Vestax switched its manufacturing or used differently sourced parts or something such that the quality of their mixers took a nosedive.

    I do still miss that weighted Vestax fader, though. I could do patterns with that fader that I just can't quite do with the Rane.
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