Music Thing: Vestax Controller One Turntable Instrument

By Ryan Block

Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:

The nice thing about DJ gear manufacturers is that they're not afraid to experiment. Gemini dropped that weird
iKey recorder a few months back, but Vestax are the kings of weird. A few years ago, they released the Faderboard,
an utterly baffling synth with no keyboard, but ten faders to play notes. It had the sound engine from a Korg Electribe, was designed by Japanese DJ Shingo2, and was completely unplayable. Then came the laughable
Scratch-O-Caster
turntable guitar, and now there's Controller One.

Around the side of a normal high-end scratch turntable are eight buttons, which speed up and slow down the platter according to musical notes. So, if you put on one of Vestax's special drone records, you can play notes by hitting the buttons, or sequencing them via MIDI. If you try it with a normal record, it will presumably just sound really, really irritating. Sure, it will costs £1,000, and is pretty much the least useful thing I can imagine, but at least it's original...

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