All that scratchin

When you scratch how is your eqs on your mixer set? I like to take all the lows out and boost the hi's all the way (sometimes, usally till it sounds right). You have to lower the gain, but it makes your cuts stand out in the mix.

I think this is basically standard technique! Plus you have to kill the bass when scratching not only for sound but to kill the rumble feedback that you can get.

As a tip for anyone just learning to scratch you gotta be able to make that record slide on the platter. If you don't have good slipmats here's a trick: You know that vinyl covering that keeps your vinyl protected...take that and cut out a circle as big as your slipmat, put the cut out plastic underneath your slipmat and scratch away! Make sure it's slippery enough so that when you scratch, the platter keeps moving and doesn't slow down or speed up too much, but not so slippery that the vinyl doesn't move when you place the needle on it.

wax paper and brand new hard felt not soft and cushy, slipmat.

Yeah, anything that slides. I even tried putting a really old useless record underneath the slipmat to make it slide. Sometimes the right kind of warp will make it slip real good!

BUTTER RUGS BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.djqbert.com/news/?news_id=11

Yea Butter Rugs are the shit you need... I mean I had the Wax paper underneath my slipmats for a while, but when u get down to it... Butter Rugs are the perfect texture of slipmat with slippery paper underneath... They're the best...

As far as EQ... There are no rules... Depending on the effect you're going for your gonna have to EQ differently... If you're going for a loud Transformer you may need to boost your mid range to give it a robot effect... If your just scratzhing words from an acapella you may opt to leave that shit completely dry as far as EQ... Never limit yourself to one setting for every scratch cause there isn't one setting.

When scratching vocals and you don't have an accapela definitely take out the bass. Then play with the treble you may be able to isolate the vocals a bit more. But yeah, it pretty much depends on what type of scratch your trying to do and what type of sound your cutting. But definitely turning down the bass and maybe hyping up the treble is the one your probably going to use most.

pretty much nailed the eq issue
butter rugs are dope but they feel strange the first time you use them, compare to the old wax paper ish.

You might want to EQ after you record your cuts. Like someone said before different cuts are going to require different EQing. If you are cutting and chirping a lot you might not have to EQ at all, but if you are crabing and doing a lot of "slapping" on the platter, you are going to pick up a low frequency "tap" sound on your recording. EQing it after is the best way to make sure you don't scrap a good take.

lower the LO if you want that nice high sounding scratch.... just lower the LO and youre set