Our first battle / scratch mixer may be 20 years old but it still boasts unique features, with DJs showcasing its creative FX to this day. Here's the ongoing story of the DJM-909.
“We would be forwarding these ideas and we just hoped that some of them were implemented. And then when the thing arrived, it was like, goodness me, there’s a lot of stuff here. It was amazing.”
Joel Clements, who’s better known as Prime Cuts from Scratch Perverts, was remembering his work as a consultant on the DJM-909. Released back in 2004, it was Pioneer DJ’s first-ever battle / scratch mixer. “I still remember the first time running through the features on it and just thinking, Christ, this is just incredible.”
When the DJM-909 hit the market along with the DJM-707, which had the same features but without the touchscreen FX, it brought with it a number of firsts. It was the first mixer to include a touchscreen; the first to include a crossfader with adjustable tension; the first battle mixer to feature Fader Start, which started a CDJ when you moved a fader; and the first battle mixer to focus heavily on FX, including the innovative fader FX, an idea that Joel and Scratch Perverts shaped.
“The initial meetings were incredibly fruitful because some of the things that we were putting forward, I just assumed we would get a ‘no,’” Joel said. “I thought, There’s no way they’re going to be able to incorporate this technology that we’re asking them to—putting forward the idea of sine waves and square waves in a mixer and being able to change the pitch of that sine wave or square wave on the fader, so you can turn the mixer into a musical instrument. For us, we used that synthesiser side of the mixer in a big way.”
This 2014 routine, which Joel and Tony Vegas recorded for DJsounds, shows the Fader Synth effect in action. Joel jams out melodies on the DJM-909, while Tony finger drums on a CDJ using Hot Cues.
The DJM-909 had 50 different effects, which for easy access during a performance could be loaded into three banks of three effects per channel. These included the standard options you might expect—delays, filters, phasers, reverbs—but it was the fader effects in particular that gained the DJM-909 a reputation for innovation. This approach suited scratch DJs, who were much more familiar with manipulating faders than knobs, and with the Fader Synth effect there was a new mode of expression to play with, which led to some famous routines.
At the end of this 2006 DMC performance you can see DJ Craze, an enthusiastic DJM-909 user, playing the mixer like a musical instrument.
And here’s the Japanese former DMC battle champion DJ CO-MA adding a G-Funk-style topline to his drum & bass routine.
The New York-based DJ Sticky Dojah, AKA Phil Lembke, has recently built a healthy following through his recreations of classic tracks, with the DJM-909 and 7-inch records at the heart of his setup. He’d owned the mixer since 2008, but it was during the COVID lockdowns that he began to fully grasp its potential. “I was stuck at home with my 909 and jumped back into my record collection and started doing little videos,” he told us. “First it was just little mixes and little ideas so I could keep them for myself. And I then started to look more into what the 909 can do. I figured out that you can actually use original samples and recreate hip-hop songs and mess around with them, and that kind of took off, a few of these things went viral.”
The DJM-909’s roll effect became central to Phil’s workflow. “I use it to loop certain parts and it’s just wonderful that the sample time is around 13 seconds, so you can create really long loops if you want to,” he said. “And also the fact that you can loop on both channels… It can actually create or recreate songs… The 909 allows you to run four loops in total. You can run four signals, two loops, and then you can put new records on and you can bring loops in and out. So it really allows you to almost like arrange a song. It’s a really great tool.”
“I remember when I started my videos,” he added. “Joel [from Scratch Perverts] reached out and was like, ‘Oh, it’s amazing what you do with the 909. I didn’t know that the machine could do that.’ And I was taken aback by that comment, because I was like, ‘What? You guys designed this thing! [laughs].’”
If DJs are still marvelling at the DJM-909’s features in 2024, you can imagine how they felt 20 years ago. Until this point, the emphasis in the battle mixer market had mostly been on durability and fader performance. Vestax had set the agenda with its PMC range, which had a laser-like focus on the needs of scratch DJs.
“The PMC-05 in the mid-‘90s was a game-changer for the scratch DJ because of the crossfader technology,” remembered Joel. “DJs went on leaps and bounds through having the ability to really practise scratching for weeks and months, as opposed to a very limited carbon strip that would wear out quite quickly.” Vestax went on to release the PMC-07 series, with its distinctive fader EQs, which was considered the industry standard scratch mixer until the DJM-909 arrived to challenge its supremacy.
“The only customisable crossfader in the industry,” was how the DJM-909 and DJM-707 were billed upon release. Back then, Jeroen Groenendijk, an AlphaTheta / Pioneer DJ product specialist and business development manager, took the DJM-707 apart to analyse its crossfader and other features for his ever-reliable DJ Resource website. “The unique feature was the contact-less crossfader that worked with LED-light bridges and not with a traditional carbon strip,” he said. “The LED technology made sure it was impossible for the crossfader to ever crack. Also the crossfader had extensive adjustments that were displayed as a graph in the screen display. This was also a never before seen feature, nor did I ever see it on any other scratch mixer released since.”
A feature that definitely did appear on later gear was the DJM-909’s paddle switch for turning FX on and off. Today’s flagship scratch products like the DJM-S11 and DJM-S7 mixers and the DDJ-REV7 controller all carry this style of control that was first seen on the DJM-909. Other notable features for the time included a dedicated foot switch input, allowing DJs to control effects with their feet, thus freeing up a hand. The curve of the two sides of the crossfader could be adjusted independently, while session inputs and outputs meant that the audio from two DJ setups could be linked for scratch-relevant sessions like battles or collaborative routines.
“Think about all of the mixers that came out in the past three or four years that didn’t have a quarter of the effects or options or anything that this thing has,” said Mister Remix in a 2018 video in DJcityTV’s Classic DJ Gear series. “It was just ahead of its damn time… If this thing had an audio card built into it, it would still be one of the most popular mixers out.”
Mister Remix only had two complaints. In a club environment, the screen could be hard to see without the proper adjustments to its brightness and contrast. And if you ever buy a DJM-909 secondhand, make sure the buttons beside the screen are in good shape, as they tend to get sticky or simply stop working. Joel said that he never had any issues with the screen, but he was never totally sold on the DJM-909’s crossfader. “It was always just a bit heavy for me,” he said. “I never really gelled with it. Compared to an S9 or an S11, it’s like trying to drive a tractor compared to a Lamborghini.”
For Phil, “The up faders weren’t as good as the Vestax ones that were around back then, because I used to do these up-fader crabs, which didn’t quite cut through with the 909. But other than that, I really loved it.”
Despite there being no plans in the pipeline, both Joel and Phil couldn’t resist calling for an updated version of the DJM-909. “It would be incredible if Pioneer DJ were to release a kind of modern version of the 909,” Joel said. “With the exact sort of implementation of the dual effects, and fader-operated internal effects, that would be amazing.”
“There’s still a lot of love for the 909 in the DJ community, in the scratch community, it would definitely be fair to say that,” Phil said. “My friend Khalil from Living Proof in London, shout-out to him, he jokingly said, ‘Well, the reason you blew up with your videos is because no one is using that machine anymore.’ But I think that might have changed, I might have changed that a little bit. I do get fan comments or messages basically saying, ‘Hey, because of you I bought that mixer again,’ or ‘I pulled it out again,’ and even people telling me that they’ve mastered how to repair it, that they replace this integrated foam to get the buttons to work again. So it’s quite a thing to witness that this machine is still so beloved.”
