Vestax Spin2 in the worxlab – briefly [Video]

Something that slipped through the tightly honed BPM coverage machine was the arrival of Vestax’s Spin sequel, called Spin2, rather Spin II which would have been way cooler. When I say slipped through, I of course mean that the PR material never arrived, thus I didn’t know about it, thus I didn’t get a change to cover it until the dying moments of the BPM show, by which time the exhibitors were threatened with cutting power immediately, and the call of the nearest motorway services on the way home was too strong to ignore.

So I’m now fixing that, by flying Mike Clarke in all the way from just down the M62 on his way to a shop up the road from me to give us a quick walk-through what Spin2 is all about.

Impressions – it’s much more conventional MIDI controller than the previous model. The original Spin had a Vestax trademark in the shape of fader EQs. But Spin2 reverts to EQ knobs, but also adds touch strips and adopts a more familiar 2 decks and a mixer format. It feels similar to the previous model and is priced at about the same level too.

The big news with Spin2 is that with iOS6 and some multi-channel jiggery pokery courtesy of algoriddim’s djay, you now get true multi-channel output and monitoring from the controller. You can see it in the video, but I’m still unsure if it’s stereo or not. I’ll be able to confirm that when one arrives.

I’m quite aware of the race between Numark and Vestax to be the first to offer such functionality, but from my perspective, I see their devices as different animals completely. The Vestax Spin2 works with Macs and iOS devices and is meant to be a very small and highly portable solution. Numark’s iDJ Pro is a larger affair aimed square at iPad owners only, indeed to the exclusion of computers completely. All you need know is that real multi-channel output from iOS is more or less here.

See also

The Pioneer DJ DJM-S3 Serato DJ mixer… looks familiar?

mark Settle·September 7, 2017·19 Comments

As Mike says in the video, Spin2 is out in Japan, and due out very soon elsewhere. I don’t believe you’ll be seeing it in Apple stores though, nor are you likely to see a Typhoon 2 either. Spin2 is for djay in its various flavours, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be mapped, so you should be able to hook it up and map it to your favourite software. But given that it’s mapped perfectly to djay for Mac, I can’t think why the target user might use anything else, unless it’s as a backup controller.

Anyway, big thanks to Mike for stopping by the new worxlab. Full review to follow soon. And check out the stupidly extensive photo gallery below.