We recently designed and built a DJ booth for Defected and Glitterbox regular, house music legend and all round top guy Simon Marlin aka The Shapeshifters.
It's quite exciting when an email reading 'call me' pops up from such an iconic and inspirational producer, Simon Marlin. I called him and we got straight to it, chatting all things DJ equipment. After a few discussions and throwing some ideas back and forth, we finalised Simon's ideal layout and setup to house his equipment. I created a set of 3D sketches to visualise how the DJ booth would look with the equipment and finishes he had opted for. Three Pioneer CDJ 3000, one Pioneer A9 Mixer and an MK 2 Technics 1210. Simon was lucky enough to get hold of two 3000’s and the new A9, these are extremely hard to get hold of right now. Temporarily, we fit a 2000 Nexus 2 until he can get the third CDJ 3000, when it becomes available.
Initially, Simon opted not to include the 1210 in the booth to conserve space in his dedicated music room. It's not a piece of kit that would be used that often, just listening to vinyl and not used for mixing. But we couldn't leave the classic 1210 out. So we came up with a design that would allow it to be stored away and pulled out from underneath. It worked perfectly.
Want to add this feature to your custom DJ booths? Let us know!
Doors were also added to keep it looking sleek and minimal in Simon's purpose built DJ room for doing mixes and live streams. We also fitted brake castors so the booth could be flush on the wall or flipped around for music streams. As with all booths we used birch ply for its durability and quality. It soaks up the finish beautifully, in this case, Rubio chocolate brown.
When we came to build the booth, we needed to get hold of a Pioneer A9 Mixer to use as a template as we had never fitted one in a booth to date and I knew just the man - Stevie Makka from SM Hire. He was kind enough to loan us the equipment including an unboxed brand new one (oh boy). For this DJ booth, we made a removable top that sits on dowels so it can be removed and replaced should the equipment change.
Simon was thrilled with the booth and we were honoured to be able to make it for him. Spending time getting it all set up correctly and catching up with Simon was a pleasure. What a great guy.
For those who don't know, The Shapeshifters are responsible for Lolas Theme (Positive Records 2004) a tune that took the official UK number one spot and went on to be one of house musics all time classics. Simon recently announced the release of his new album Let Loose. You can catch The Shapeshifters at Glitterbox Ibiza Closing Party and Defected Malta to name but a few.
