Video Review
First Impressions / Setting up
These look pretty much like jumbo laptop slips. They’re better built than your average laptop sleeve – all back heavy-duty nylon, high density padding, and chunky zips – but basically, the notion is similar: You unzip your Magma case around three sides, slot your controller in and zip it up again. Wait, though, there’s one other thing you need to do. The cases come with some foam blocks with Velcro on one side of them. The idea is that you arrange the blocks on your controller, Velcro side up, where it makes most sense (I demo this in the video).
On carefully closing the case, the Velcro sticks to the lid, and so not only is your controller now protected from dreaded “bent crossfader syndrome,” but your bag is also “customised” for you controller next time, meaning you just have to slot it in for future use.
In Use
Once you’re all set up, it’s then just a case of slipping your controller in and heading off. The cases are deliberately lightweight – they’re certainly better than a soft case, having a thin but absorbent layer of foam under the black nylon coating – but they’re obviously not going to protect your gear as well as a hard flight case. The handles are stitched-in nylon with just a little padding. How comfortable this is going to be over time depends somewhat on how heavy your controller is. We tried the cases with a Vestax VCI-380 and a Pioneer DDJ-SX; the VCI-380 was fine, but my colleague reporting achy hands after a long walk back to the car with a DDJ-SX in one of these.
The nylon blocks provide steady and sturdy protection within the bag and ensure that your controller doesn’t move around, although you should be careful to get one that’s the right size for your unit.
Conclusion
These will be most useful, I think, for two types of DJ. The first would be the “part-time public DJ”. You don’t really have the need for a “pro” case or bag that will cost you hundreds, but at the same time you’re smart enough to relies that “under the arm”, exposed to the elements, isn’t the best way to move your expensive controller around.
The second would be for the DJ who already has a decent laptop bag that can also fit leads, headphones etc, but who now also wants to carry a DJ controller. For DJing in places with their own gear, you’d just grab your laptop bag on the way out of the room (assuming you use your laptop at all for DJing of course in those circumstances), which also contains your phones, spare cables etc. But for gigs where you also need your controller? A quick zip in and you’re off – a lightweight, secure extra carrier helping you get it their in one piece.
I liked these bags. Be sure to check out the range to find the one that’s right for you (we reviewed the CTRL L and the CTRL DDJ-SX), but basically for a pretty good price, you can have something that’s streets ahead of nothing when it comes to moving your controller from home to gig and back again.
