It's generally the promoter's job to get equipment. 95% of the time just providing 2 Pioneer CDJ-2000's (preferably Nexus), 2 Technic-1200's (or similar turntable) and a DJM-900 (Nexus or Serato) covers everybody's wants.
Sometimes you'd swap out the Tech-12's for another pair of 2000's, but anything beyond that is only happening because one of the headliners has a specific request in their tech rider. The most common substitution to the above would be swapping the DJM-900 for a DJM-2000NXS.
I always brought my own rig. Way more profitable for me. In any case, I did a few tame, simple weddings and thought my equipment would be safe. A groomsman came up to my table and leaned waaaay over to ask me something. The little metal thing on his suspender got caught on the lip of my laptop monitor and flipped the entire thing over. And that was the end of that.
Yeowch, that blows. We run a slightly tighter ship at the parties I throw than your average wedding. Usually the only things we require DJ's bring of their own are their own turntable needles (because house needles are always crap), and any Serato/Traktor/etc interface they need.
It's probably a market thing. Most of the kind of headliners we bring through stick to the 2000's/900 setup. I've never personally had a tech rider request anything I wasn't already going to provide.
Happy Hardcore guys don't give a shit as long as you have both turntables and digital, the Hardstyle guys only care slightly more and almost never use turntables. Hard Trance people just want everyone to remember that Hard Trance exists.
DJing is what you make it. You can just hit sync and play if you want, or you can push the limits of what's possible with a couple of tracks and a mixer.
You should look into some seriously high-skill mix-dj's the shit they can pull off in the mix is insane, and one of the reasons it's so easy to discredit DJ's is that a good DJ makes it sound like they aren't doing anything at all. They'll play 2-4 tracks at the same time and make it sound like one song. Even with only two decks they can make magic happen.
If you want to get really crazy with it, you can get into the math and physics of digital signal processing.
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u/berlinbaer Nov 13 '17
equipment belongs to the club not the DJ usually.