It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look at what famous DJs and producers tour with. Today we take a look at the gear setup of Desolat founder, Loco Dice. Loco Dice travels pretty light and the one thing that readers should take away from this setup is to always have a backup solution.
There are 2 separate laptops, multiple hard drives and a USB flash drive, making it pretty hard for any technical issue to keep Loco Dice from performing. Overall the setup has remained the same since we last saw how Loco Dice performs. Check out the full gear breakdown.
Loco Dice Setup
Computers
- Personal computer – MacBook Pro 15″
- Performance computer – MacBook Air 13″
Performance Gear
- Boss DD-7 Delay
- Native Instruments Audio 10 (available in the DJTT store)
- Desolat Slipmate (thin and perfect for mixing)
- Desolat timecode records (limited edition!)
- Isonoe turntable anti-vibration feet
Hard Drives
- Personal backup (few documentaries, sounds and performance backup) – WD My Passport 1 TB External HD
- Performance backup – WD Elements 500 GB External HD
- Second Performance backup (Gotta be ready for all situations, learn how to create an emergency USB backup) – SanDisk Extreme Flash Drive 64 GB
Ear Plugs
- Red – Customized for the club, -15 dB
- Yellow – For hotels and planes (anti pressure)
- Black – LOCO DICE promo give aways by Ear Peace
Personal cables
- MacBook with extensions and adapters
- Mini jack splitter to watch movies with friends
- Jack to jack to rock my playlist in any car or hotel room across the world
Perfomance cables
- Oyaide NEO Custom Audio Cables of all types “The BEST!!”
- DJ TechTools Chroma Cables
- Powerstrip with adapters for every country as you never know what you gonna find
Headphones
- Personal: Bose noise canceling, don’t leave home without them! Even use them to sleep in the plane with no music.
- Performance: Sennheiser HD-25
Travel Essentials
- iPhone 6
- Passport
- Nok Nok credit card & Loyalty Cards holder
- Lufthansa Rimowa travel case with IMPORTANT travel goodies and Ortofon MKII Nightclub needles
- Customized bottle spout for the tequila! (birthday present!)
Stay up to date with Loco Dice on Locodice.com, Soundcloud, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook
What other artist setups would you like to see?
Let us know in the comments below!
RAWRAW!! peace and love bros
What version of Traktor is he using?
[…] Loco Dice […]
+ looper Red Sound Soundbite XL? (http://www.redsound.com)
Is loco dice Spanish, cause if he’s not, than that name is kind of racist…
Luciano and Richie hawtin setup
[…] on the popularity of last week’s gear setup with Loco Dice, we’re bringing you another popular artist gear setup. Today, Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland […]
OK, so he’s got hardware fault tolerance in place, but how does he keep the four or five drives (two laptops, two or three externals) in sync?
I’ve recently spent long hours testing various cloud sync configurations only to find thousands of duplicate tracks added to my machines and bandwidth eaten up served with a nice bill for the extra gigs used. I was hoping to share my findings with the community in a future post but so far not much to report.
It’s impractical to sync four on the road otherwise than through the cloud. It is easier at home with a network sync agent.
So…. If anyone has successfully managed to cloud sync multi machines with Traktor collections pls share! Peace.
Love this article! Any chance Ean Golden and Mad Zack would do one?
Ean Golden: http://www.djtechtools.com/2014/09/22/how-i-play-ean-golden/
Mad Zach: http://djtechtools.com/2014/06/26/mad-zach-how-i-play-interview-hour-long-live-set/
i think, to this list, the free storage on a cloud is also an must have on the way.
Did you get his laptops mixed up?
Personal computer – MacBook Pro 15?
Performance computer – MacBook Air 13?
Did you really just answer your own question?
Personal- Home,. Studio and personal time
Performance- Club performances?
Nothing is mixed up. He uses the Air for deejaying.
Thanks Gavin, that surprised me. Pretty cool stuff, I have an air also but never used it to DJ. Maybe now is the time.
I don’t use an Air but I almost got one as my most recent gig notebook because of how well Dice says it works. Even though I didn’t get an Air he did open up my eyes to a 13″ notebook so when it was time to replace my old 15.6″ I went with a 13″ MBP and I can’t say I miss the screen real estate much or regret the decision.
I <3 Desolat. So many good artists, my top 3 have to be Aldo Cadiz, Basti Grub and reboot. Good article, been a fan of Loco Dice since the M-nus days.
I don’t get why he bothers with turntables? so much extra lugging around & considering the type of music he plays CDJs would be more stable… The WOW & Flutter on turntables makes them really annoying for matching beats. For turntablists & DJs who scratch it makes sense, I dont see what he gains from dealing with the headache of turntables
Techno & House DJs have been playing on regular turntables since ever. It’s also about the feeling + its just more fun than playing on CDJs!
Problems with turntables / DVS in clubs are most of the time caused by bad maintenance and bad construction of DJ booths.
he used to be a hip hop DJ, that’s why he still loves turntables and vinyl
I don’t disagree with you but its what he likes and when you’re Loco Dice you can ask for whatever set up you want and of they want you to play there they’re going to give it to you.
which are the Bose noise canceling headphones?
I think you guys forgot the X1 and as my twin said below “more post like that 🙂
Tequila hah
More post like that, 🙂
That is traveling “pretty light”?
Dice is one of my favorites, almost on par with Marco Carola (who uses a nearly identical setup, just a little less gear), but damn he really makes things harder than it needs to be. They have to tear up the booth almost everywhere he plays and the person opening rarely plays in the same space (its just not practical). That’s fine with the new festival norm of side by side setups, but not for clubs that have much less space.
Not nearly as bad as someone running two laptops, Ableton/Push on top of Traktor, etc just to play a set that sounds pretty much the same as someone else using much less software/gear. Especially when you watch these people play they do almost nothing with all this extra gear. That is way more ridiculous and adds NOTHING to the show/enjoyment of the people at the party. Dice travels way lighter than those people but even still this ain’t exactly traveling light!
He’s just carrying important peripherals. Doesn’t mean he has to put it on the table every time he plays.
I’m not talking about the extra stuff. I’m talking about all the stuff he actually uses every time. I’m about as big of a Dice fan as there is out there and what I said above is pretty much universally true about him wherever he plays.
Yep… if you look at the “how i play” video you’ll see, that he uses a pretty standard DVS setup. A club seriously should be able to provide a proper turntable setup aside from these ugly CDJs 😉
It’s way more than a standard DVS setup. A standard DVS is 2 timecode records, an interface, maybe a controller (Dicers, an X1, or something like that), and that’s it. He’s got all that and then some. They have to take the feet off the 1200’s and put his on, hook up the Cycloops, Delay pedal, and the foot pedal that controls it, etc. Like I said it is not nearly as bad as people playing with multiple laptops/software/huge controllers, etc, but its not just a “standard DVS” set up or “traveling light”.
I’ve been there when hes played every club gig he’s had in San Francisco and he does do it every time. Last time he was here the the openers had to play on a temporary set up at the back of 1015 because of his set up.
Any experienced roadie or DJ would be able to implement this setup during a long track.
Switching out feet can easily be done at soundcheck and everyone else can deal with it because he’s the headliner. Adding send/return FX is as simple as plugging in a few audio cables to the mixer (you don’t have to turn off the master out for it to work).
Don’t see how he’s “making it harder than it has to be” at all….
The people that do sound at all the places he plays at in SF must be morons then because they don’t seem to think it is that easy and definitely can’t pull this off during one long track. Most of the time he’s the only one that plays on the mixer that night and he sometime travels with his own engineer that sets it all up WHILE NO ONE IS PLAYING and it takes him quite a while.
And I never said you have to turn off the mixer to add something to the send/receive. But you do have to be able to access the back of the mixer while someone is playing. A task that is not all that simple in some DJ booths even when no one is trying to deejay.
Sound guys are always resistant to any type of during-show change up because they don’t trust the DJs to do it properly without fucking up the levels, plugging something in while it’s live, etc. I can’t blame them.
If he’s the headliner, he gets to choose the mixer in the main DJ booth. If an opener is unwilling to adapt, they have to either come up with their own solution (a DJ setup in the back of the room) or be willing to be good at on-the-fly mixer replacement.
I’m not sure why you’d even need to access the back of the main board. Sub-mixers are very inexpensive, and really easy to plug into a patch bay (which are pretty standard in SF). Why are we making this so complicated?
I do a lot of techin in my city for bands and DJs and it can be a pain but with a bit of pre planning on the night by the tech in charge. I find the logistics are almost similar to running 5 live acts with entirely separate setups! I also play out with a controllerist setup and having tech knowledge makes life so much easier for everyone involved. Just my experience tho, everyone’s different and maybe iv just got lucky over the years with setups and my own setup in booths.
Exactly! Any good sound tech should know their venue’s gear and likely the gear they’ll be facing during the night. That’s their job. Planning ahead is key!
fuck are u talking about. he plays with a laptop, a ONE guitar pedal and an interface. oh he changes the turntable feet. big fucking deal. so during the pre dj age i bet u ripped your hair out at the guitars and amps and drumset and mics and pedal boards right? glad we’re here to hear you moan.
Mr. Paul van Dyk Setup explained please 😀
Only thing I would add is: reconsider what hard drives you select as many brands like WD have high failure rates. This article (link below) is an update to the 2014 analytical assessment / comparison of drives. I would check out the 2014 article (linked in updated paged) as well.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
I was just about to post this. Glad I’m not the only one who caught this. Being a computer technician/IT I would strongly recommend staying away from the WD external HDs. High failure rates on those drives. Most of the Data recoveries were on Seagates and WD external HDs. I would recommended the G-tech G-drive minis for performance due to the heat sink, Glyphs are really good and have amazing warranty but they get really hot.
Also you guys, spelled Desolat “Slipmate” and not slipmat. No biggie though. Peace! Great article though.
That’s pretty cool that he brings the isonoes with him.
would like to see the Dubfire, Hawtin, Adriatique and Kolombo setups.
Cheers
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