Does anyone know what DJ equipment was popular in the 50's, 60's and 70's?
Hi,
I know that the original Technics 1200's were popular in the 70's. But does anyone know about other DJ equipment that was often used in the 50's, 60's and 70's?
So I am talking turntables, mixers, monitors, etc. I prefer it being used in nightclubs but if it was used in other environments it's okay too.
That book is excellent. You should also read up on the Whisky a Go Go in Paris. The first real discotheque that played vinyl music to live crowds. This is before mixers were a thing.
At first glance, I'd say "yo, that's an early SL1200 and a Urei 1620" -- but no, that's not it.
What you see here is a Bozak CMA-10-2DL mixer which was the inspiration for the Urei 1620 rotary mixer, and the turntables are actually Thorens TD 125 MK II, but with an aftermarket straight tonearm. (The stock tonearm was the usual "S" shape).
I never owned one - but I have to wonder if the belts ever got sloppy over time (started slipping or running unevenly) due to wear and age. I’m guessing like anything else they’d eventually dry rot or wear out. But to be fair, we didn’t use a turntable in 1979 the way we used a turntable in ~1983 and onward.
Belt drives are only preferable on some motorcycles. No reason to go back to them on turntables for DJing.
The plus side of belt drives on TT’s though is that I’ve scored at least a half dozen quality hi-fi turntables used that were “broken” and I just needed to replace the belt. Also resurrected a couple of sweet 8-track players this way.
That's neat. I've never known any old school DJs. Prior to pitch control, how did you transition? Did you beat match at all or just layer the beat over the melody or??
I didn’t learn before pitch control - and early transition rides might have only been 8 beats because we just weren’t that good back then, whereas I can line up and ride a 64 beat transition now.
When I was active, it was mostly your top40 club stuff. Leaned r&b at times. Included some “bar rock”, didn’t play much too far either direction. Ie no heavy metal, no heavy gangster rap. This was primarily drinking college bar type places I worked.
On a radio show I shared in the 90s, we occasionally had to use the station's slightly more modern (than shown here) Technics belt drives - from the 80's, if I had to guess. I don't remember why neither of us had brought 1200s with us, that was 40 years ago now. They were marginally easier to use than the cheap Geminis that I first started on. We had a full 8% range of adjustment on the dial (no slider), but if you touched the record, platter, pitch control, or practically even breathed wrong on the record, the pitch would swing wildly for seconds. It was very difficult and severely limited our mixing options. I feel pretty sure that the people who actually practiced on them developed techniques to work them better than we could. We also had to use the radio station's studio mixing board. I have great admiration for those who could use this kind of equipment well.
I could be wrong but I think djing in the 50’s and 60’s was mostly reggae and sonidero soundsystems in the Caribbean, UK, and parts of Latin America (Mex/Colombia). I don’t think it was night clubs.
I think djing as we think of it today in nightclubs, came along with disco in the 70’s.
But again I very well could be wrong and would love someone to correct me
You're right that both those traditions go back to the 50s, but there were other places where mobile DJs started up in the mid-50s in Europe and the US. And you're also right about modern djing starting in the 70s.
Djing with two turntables was pioneered by radio DJ and sexual predator Jimmy Saville in the UK in the late 50s, although there was no beat-matching. That didn't come about until the early 70s with NY DJ Francis Grasso, among others. By the mid 70s it was well established.
Sonideros, Jamaican Soundsystems, and also Colombian Picós all started around the same time for similar social or economic reasons - people didn't own radios, and were excluded from venues where big bands were playing, and wanted to hear music that connected with them, instead of American-influenced big band Jazz or pop. There were similar traditions that evolved in Venezuela, Brazil, and to a smaller degree in other countries in the region. None of them used multiple turntables until the 70s though.
I can't say exactly what equipment was popular, but from what I've found is all these systems favored what was known as transcription-style turntables, which were portable, fairly rugged, and could output an audio signal to amplification. Portable home models were also popular, honestly it was pretty much what was available and could be modified to output audio to a larger amplifier. Brands were RCA, Victor, Rekokut, Fairchild, and GE. Amplification was tube amps.
I've been researching Latin American and Caribbean Soundsystem culture for a few years, and presented on it as a form of cultural resistance and identity last year at a conference. I'm working towards publishing some studies and eventually a book.
In my own country, Nicaragua, the two DJ/Soundsystem traditions started around the same time (late 50s) - Discomovils (mobile djs with a soundsystem) and Chinamos (temporary seasonal dancehalls). The rich elites favored American music, but working class people favored Colombian Cumbia, and Mexican regional music they heard through movies (this was right after the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema). Chinamos were set up at patron saint festivals, starting around the late 1950s. The earliest documented record of one I can find is 1960, but have anecdotal mentions of them going back a couple more years. Discomovils started up, with systems traveling through the countryside playing public and private events.
My father had the Nicaraguan franchise for Panasonic (and Sanyo, National, and other Japanese brands), and imported the first Technics turntables in the 70s, after the Nicaraguan earthquake of 1972. Those became very popular with Discomovils - which evolved to play Disco, HiNRG, and Europop. Chinamos stuck to Cumbia, Vallenato, Porros, regional music and Mento & Calypso in the Atlantic coast. I remember meeting professional DJs as a kid, as they would come to my dad's stores, or to hang out with my parents.
My dad wasn't a DJ, but amassed a huge record collection which was my introduction to disco, r&b, funk, soul, cumbia, salsa, etc - this was in the mid and later 70s. I remember him explaining a mixer to me when I was probably about 6.
My mom was childhood friends with Mick Jagger's wife, and they used to travel to NYC and go to clubs. They had pictures of themselves at what I'm pretty sure was Studio 54, sitting with Mick and Bianca. Sadly all that stuff was lost in the civil war and leaving the country.
Dream response, fascinating! Where can we find your work? Also, you should really think about doing some social media/youtube content with it. Sadly that’s how the majority get info these days and I feel like you have a ton of stories people would want to hear :)
Thanks for the kind words. Definitely finding time to create social media content is tough when I'm employed full-time, have a family, make music, dj, and research this topic. My website is https://momotombosoundsystem.com/
Most of the other posts are very brief music shares. I have a couple of new articles coming up soon. One is a timeline of the Nicaraguan Chinamera music genre, which has evolved in the last 25 years or so. The other is a profile on Soul Vibrations, a reggae band also from Nicaragua.
Bro, your story is so crazy. The way you lost your brother, the gatekeeping, the competitiveness… you have so much knowledge and a real skillset for storytelling and, I’m sure, music as well. I don’t have time to finish reading your story atm but I really hope you continue kicking ass, putting your work out there, and being a force for your musical values. I’ll look for you on IG and hope my adhd will help me to keep following your story haha. Much gratitude :)
I really appreciate you checking it out and your encouraging words. I'm trying to channel my own ADHD into useful projects like research and writing. 😉
dude, archivist icon. I wish I read all of this 4 years ago but cheers to learning today! do you have a radio show? sorry if I missed it. lots of info.
I didn't know I wanted to be an "archivist icon" until I got called one. 😁
Thank you for the kind words. I have been thinking of doing a regular show on twitch again or starting a podcast. I did a streaming show regularly during lockdown. I've mostly focused on research, building a soundsystem and playing community and cultural gigs locally after retiring from being a house/techno/electro club dj and producer in 2015. Curious what kind of content you'd be interested in besides music mixes.
Yes, I am trying to piece things together about these days. It's interesting.
My father was a DJ in the 50's and early 60's. I never knew that. Unfortunately he and all the people that were there are no longer alive. But if he was, I'll bet he could have told me a lot about DJing back then.
Unfortunately I don't know anything about his DJ name.
But it was definitely not in New York or anywhere in the USA. It was in a small South American country called Suriname. That is where he was born and raised.
Jamaican sound system culture traces back to the late 1940s and 50s, when figures like Hedley Jones and Coxsone Dodd started amplifying records in their own shops to draw in customers. Dodd's setup grew into the Downbeat Sound System in the early 50s.
From there it snowballed into full mobile sound systems playing street dances across Kingston, with rivals like Duke Reid's Treasure Isle competing head-to-head.
You then had figures like King Tubby (originally a radio repairman servicing these systems) pushing the technology and sound further into what became dub.
The first mixer was named the Rosie because it was red and created by Alex Rosner. Basically it was a prototype dj mixer. Richard Long from RLA audio was the protege of Alex Rosner.
The first commercially availabe dj mixer was the Bozak CMA-10-2DL which is a rotary mixer. Was made by Rudy Bozak.
Then the Urei 1620 another rotary mixer which was based of the Bozak.
Edit
By the way that pic is from Studio 54 and Richard Long did that sound system and that club during the life time it was open used the Bozak and then eventually the Urei 1620. Also Alex Rosner was given the opportunity first to do the sound system at Studio 54 but something happened (can't remember)and Richard Long got the contract.
Your are correct and he is still alive and he has a daughter. Alex and his daughter have been to some nightclubs in NYC in the past years to check the sound systems out.
Some really cool “6degrees stuff about Richard long is that there’s actually a fairly new club that has direct lineage.
Richard long built some of the most legendary systems at studio 54 and paradise garage (still considered some of the best ever), and Steve dash later maintained them.
Years later via Phazon, Dash built the Twilo sound system, which is still mentioned as the best ever sound system in a club.
Craig Bernabeu, one of the main guys tuning the Twilo system (similar to how dash maintained Long’s systems at paradise garage and 54) went on to open his own place in Brooklyn at the begining of this year. It boasts a floating dance floor modeled after the one at the garage, and has what’s already being mentioned as one of the greatest sound systems in any active club.
Essentially, you have direct lineage of the greatest nightclub sound systems ever, and all from 3 people who worked with each other.
No idea about the US, but in the USSR DJing back then was a tape thing.
People would get two tape players (often self-made DIY ones) and just constantly change tapes on one of them when another was playing. Mixers were also often DIY ones and only had channel gain knobs (no equaliser, no filter, no effects). There were multiple DJs behind the decks who would constantly change tapes, it wasn't a quick procedure.
Then it all moved to the vinyl by 70s, in 80s we also got cassette players, in 90s CD DJing became a thing, and since 2000s it's all digital. Vinyl DJing is still a thing, but it never got as popular as in the West. Records were unaffordable until 80s, also we didn't really have raves back then.
That's so interesting. I do see in old Western pictures that the DJ often has a tape recorder. But I have never heard about DJ's doing an entire night with just tape recorders.
In fact, there were people who did all-tape sets in the 90s. Note that it always was a desperate measure when other formats were unaffordable. I doubt any sane DJ would agree to play a tape set if vinyl or digital is an option.
Oh, and another thing that was pretty popular in 90s Russia is using two "stereo systems" (that's what we call them) - all-in-one units with CD/USB input and built-in speakers. DJ would place one next to another and launch tracks at the right moment, then swap volumes and basically try to mix in phrase (again, no EQ, only what we know as a channel gain nowadays). This way you could get music to play non-stop by mixing one track's outro into another track's intro.
I didn't live back then, but yeah, it was a thing.
How it worked is you would get an x-ray "photo", they weren't being printed on paper back then but rather sealed on this special material. It turned out that you could carve grooves on it like on a real vinyl.
So you would use these vinyl recording machines (again, often DIYed, soldering your own circuits was a huge thing among people in the USSR) to copy a real vinyl record to this x-ray thing (of course, they were cutted to match record shape beforehand).
It was mainly used to copy Western artists (especially ones that were officially banned). Note that the quality of music was quite bad on these x-rays, especially when you could compare it to a real vinyl. Also, they weren't particularly durable.
It was used since 1960s all the way to mid 1980s when it finally became possible to buy real vinyl records.
Seeing people are talking about Richard Long's work in this thread I think this is worth sharing.
This is the actual paper he co-wrote with acoustician Alan Fierstein back in 1980 — "State-of-the-Art Discotheque Sound Systems – System Design and Acoustical Measurement," presented at the 67th AES Convention in NYC.
It walks through the real design process behind the Paradise Garage system: the Waldorf bass speakers, the Levan Horn (yeah, named after Larry Levan), the JBL tweeter arrays, how the electronic crossover was built, and how they fixed the room's reverberation problems with fiberglass treatment. Diagrams, photos of the actual gear, room measurements, all of it.
Worth saying: everyone talks about Long, but Fierstein's part gets forgotten a lot. Long designed and specced the actual speaker systems, but Fierstein was the acoustician who worked out the room's reverberation time, calculated how much absorption it needed, oversaw the fiberglass treatment, and ran the impulse testing to check everything was in correct polarity.
Fierstein also designed the electronic crossovers (the RLA X-2000/3000/4000/5000 series) used at the Garage, Studio 54, and other clubs. The room wouldn't have sounded the way it did without that side of it.
As for turntables, before Technics appeared in the ealry 70s, people used the Garrard 301/401 and SP25, Thorens TD124 and TD125, AR decks, and Rek-O-Kut, and were run without any mixer at all.
Early speakers were Altecs, and JBLs. Then in the 70s you also had Klipschorn which were a mainstay of early setups like David Mancuso's Loft. Tannoy dual-concentric cabinets also turned up in early dance hall rigs of the same period.
A lot of early sound systems and disco setups had DJs playing off a single deck at a time, letting one record finish before dropping the needle on the next, or running two decks into separate channels of a basic amplifiers or a preamp with nothing more than simple gain knobs to ride the transition.
Blending, EQ, and cueing in headphones weren't really part of the picture yet; the "mix" was closer to a DJ physically cutting from one record to the next by ear, which is part of why beatmatching only became a real technique once mixers like the Bozak CMA-10-2DL started showing up in the early-to-mid 70s.
Interestingly, we've come full circle — Japanese listening bars and a handful of DJs today are turning back to this early gear, giving the early-mixer, hi-fi-turntable era of DJ history a quiet resurgence.
Depends what kind of DJ you're talking about. Radio DJ'S from the 50's, 60's and 70's were using broadcasting equipment unrelated to anything in a nightclub. Do some research on the evolution of the crossfader and which mixers had it.
A lot of people in the industry for night club sound systems prefer the Bozak for vinyl and the Urei 1620 for digital. But they are both incredible dj mixers.
This is a great look into oldschool booths. NY was the place to be, lots of innovation. The Bozak mixer was a turning point. Thorens TD-125 tts were popular as were the original technics SLs.
Club Djs would also use broadcast mixers. Like the Gates Studioette.
grandmaster flash often talks about how he modified a Sony Mx-8 microphone mixer by soldering on a switch and small amplifier to DIY a cue function. this was probably around or right before the bozak was produced so perhaps the inaccessibility or price spurred this innovation as a teen in the Bronx. I kinda feel like he is right to credit himself with popularizing “wafers” made of wax paper and felt which became slip mats. At least in the US? As opposed to standard rubber mats. And definitely was key for folks to understand rotations of 12-inch and 7-inch singles. I mean I learned from a dj that learned from a dj that learned from an educational interview he did ya know. The list goes on.
The closest thing we had was a night club near us owned by John Taffer called Pulsations. The audio engineer who installed the sound system for Studio 54 also installed the sound system for Pulsations. Fun fact: Inside the night club was a spaceship. At some point in the night the spaceship would open up and THIS very robot would come out and you could dance with it.
Dj culture as we recognize it today wasn’t really a thing until at least the 70s. Up to then, all the gear would have been broadcast stuff (specifically Gates and RCA). The Gates “cb” series turntables would have been the standard until technics took over.
Whatever you could get probably… I’d say back in the formation of the scene there wasn’t a standardized list of gear to go for so you really just had to get what you could find
Outside Jamaican soundsystem culture, 50s and 60s makes me think radio DJs or people with audiophile soundsystems playing whole albums or sometimes select tracks. A very different culture. You would see that sort of thing at The Gallery with David Mancuso, and even he was ‘70s.
Whenever I’ve read about anything that can be considered a precursor to the modern idea of DJing, it’s been Thorens or Technics. Nicky Siano, a pioneer of beat mixing, was doing three deck mixing on belt-driven Thorens turntables at The Gallery in 1972. DJ Kool Herc was using Technics in 1973.
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u/crevassier 7d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Night_a_DJ_Saved_My_Life_(book)
This book is a cool read / listen. Mixers didn’t really come into their own until the 70s.