Reply to Traktor Kontrol S4, 14 months later

I did a mini review of this last year in January/February. I used it for about a month and I put down my initial thoughts. That review is here. Please note that many photos on that review are not linked anymore. They were going to my old website, which was wiped. The photos consisted of me showing the unboxing and doing a simple knob swap so, you're not missing much.

This is what it looks like now:
*Other than most of the OEM knobs being swapped out, no other physical modifications have been done.


I must say the controller has held up very well so far. I have been using it live on a weekly basis since last summer. It has been exposed to smoke, general club grime and drink splashes. I give it a good wipe down the morning after and it is stored in a rolling luggage bag. I have not experienced some of the hardware problems that other users have been facing. This thing works for me every time and even though I do have my backups, I am very confident with this piece of gear .

I've modified my setup a few times since buying this. Since I play a number of different music genres, I have had the most success with a 3 deck + sample deck setup. 2 decks for mixing, the 3rd for sound layering and scratching and the sample deck for further samples. I use the S4 along with my DJ TechTools Midi Fighter Classic in 4 banks mode.



For most of my gigs, I plug into the Aux-Input of a Rane TTM56 so our crew can run two different setups at once. For my one off gigs, I just plug directly into a mixing board which then goes into a PA.



I do scratch with this and initially, I was worried about the crossfader life, but I've had no issues with it so far. My record hand is my left hand and the controller is a bit small so, I have to set it up at an angle for comfortable scratching.

I've covered everything I need to say about the controller. If you're looking to buy one, feel free to ask me questions about it.