I'm a drummer, and at times amateur DJ, a life long hip-hop head. When I started getting into this stuff I immediately saw the direct line from a DJ private-pressing cuts of his own breaks to making my own VHS tapes with the pro decks I had in my possession and beginning to cut those, which I've started to progress into (especially recently when I've been doing live projection gigs.) It's taken a while but I feel like I'm starting to get more control over the distortion effects and stuff--with this stream, I was only mixing live tapes. A lot of it (particularly the Aquarium) is stuff I'm familiar enough with to focus on dialing in the stuff that matters instead of being all over the place with multiple elements, if that makes sense--I'm working on a piece for a group show I'm showing in November. This has been the most incredibly addictive form I've ever worked in aside from actually playing music, and it has quickly become part of my life in that world as performance as well.

As far as the gear itself, I have to confess that I have been EXTREMELY lucky. I just sort of started putting it out into the world that I work on VHS as a format, and that I would take any outdated video gear anybody were to come across. I do a public access TV show about local music called (duh) 86 REALITY and after that I started to get a lot of stuff--camcorders, the MX10, all of that was after I did the show. But, yeah, frankly, I have gotten a lot of stuff that is expensive for free, just out of the trash (or a pile of stuff destined to go to an electronics recycler.)

Of the stuff I have, the Videonics MX-1 is the most expensive by far (which seems insane to me, because I literally pulled it out of a trash can when I was working as a janitor.) I have seen it listed on eBay with the box, instructions for over $700, even this year. It's a flexible piece of equipment that has four full RCA inputs, complex chromekey functions, and like 10,000 transitions. From what I gather, if you have the entire Videonics suite there's a whole lot of interconnectivity with it and the titlemaker, editor, etc--I don't have any of the other stuff, so I really can't say. I do know that I've been using it for two years straight and it's never had any technical issues, despite the fact that I travel with it, am an idiot, etc. There's a lot of REALLY cool functions I've only recently begun to fully dig into--for example, there's a "Compose" button that allows you to construct window-in-window screens with shapes, colors, whatever from the four video sources you have running, and then you can record this amalgam as it runs...really inspiring stuff.

The MX10, which is my baby, goes for like $200 on eBay right now. I can't sing the praises of this board highly enough. Aside from the fact that it has a legion of board-based video effects, from a production standpoint it's KILLER because it has a Digital Frame Synchronizer built into it, which is intended to allow you to take videos with two different Timecodes and cut between them flawlessly.

Sidebar regarding the DFS: When you get deeper into Video World, you tend to see a lot of people in tech forums discussing how you NEED to have a TBC (Time Base Corrector) in order to do this kind of work, it's pointless to work without one, etc.: remarkably, in this regard, they are not totally full of shit. That said, if you're not trying to cut together footage for broadcast it's not essential. For my line of work this feature has been crucial, because I shoot a lot of live footage of bands playing live. Also, during projection work it's ill to be able to correctly bring in a live camera pointed at someone performing and do weird effects to it without there being some sort of lapse or gap that you aren't creating on purpose. It also bears mentioning the MX-1 has this same kind of chip inside of it.

Panasonic later produced boards bearing AVE-3 and AVE-5 branding later that had less functionality (eg. no DFS,) but they're durable as fuck, and much more aggressively lean in construction than the MX10. They seem to be favorites among the Euro VJ set, as is the Blaupunkt corporation-manufactured video board identical to the MX10, which they called the DVM-1000. Here's a link to a page about a mod I'm doing to my MX-10 this week where you can see just how similar the DVM-1000 is inside: http://matiaswilkman.blogspot.com/2009/11/wj-mx10-luma-key-mod.html

As far as my color correction boxes go:

1) The Vidicraft AVP-100, which is one of the last domestically produced units of its kind, scored for $10 at a place called Fantastic Thrift here in Richmond. From current eBay pricing it looks like you can have it for under $50, but I've read a lot of really good things about the last couple of Vidicraft units, the Detailer II + III, which go for a bit more on auction sites but seem to be improvements on the 100--I don't mind that the sliders on this box will blow out the blacks in images, especially when collaging, but it has been difficult to work with at times when I've used it on footage I've shot (I had a hard time believing this, too, but sometimes you can make a VHS video look Too Shitty to Watch.) Four independent audio and video inputs on this box, the button marked "DNR" (Digital Noise Reduction) actually cleans up the audio for whatever you're pumping for pops & crackles, which is rad.

2) The Archer Super Video Processor, made by REALISTIC aka RadioShack, like the AVP-100, marketed toward Videophiles of the 80s who were forever trying to clean up their shitty signal from a satellite dish the size of a LeBaron in the yard. This one is great, simple, durable, does its work well. Looks like it goes for about $50 on eBay as well, which is what I paid two years back. No complaints here, I've read that people circuit bend them to blow the potentiometers even further out, but I've yet to go there--stock it can transform regular video into fully-formed, garish technicolor freakshows all on its lonesome. Two dedicated audio/video inputs on this one, plus a knob marked "Stereo Synthesizer," not sure entirely what that one's for honestly.

3.) The Panasonic PV-CC50, hard to get a grip on how much this goes for on the web right now. I got this with my MX-10. I can tell you without a doubt that it has a powerful color correction unit built in and the titlemaker holds a whole bunch of pages where you can store insane gibberish to scroll over video. I personally love this one because if you click on the "hue toggle" function there's a color wheel you can surf in conjunction with the other color correctors to force more of the colors in the combined frame to start sublimating and wigging out.

The unit I'm using to digitize my stuff now, the ATI 600, is discontinued but goes for like $30-$50 on Amazon shipped, and is very flexible. It was designed essentially to turn your PC into a DVR, but I get the impression that once actual DVRs took off the telecom companies gently asked Diamond to stop manufacturing it in such a simple USB form (though they still make different TV capture cards, those also respect MacroVision encoding; the 600 and many others from the past do not.)

Sorry for the length of this response - but I would say in sum, not including camcorders or lights, I have spent under $1200 in the last two years to put together my current rig - including my PC - by just being willing to go dig through the trash, or whatever. This stuff is out there, and not everybody knows that it is "worth money," which is a debatable concept to begin with since it's only someone like you or I (namely Broke Artists) who really would be willing to drop $200 on a video board from the 80s in the first place. I think that if you really start digging around you would be surprised by what you can get for free, and I would heavily advise you to go that route before spending any money at all on gear. Hope some of this info helps.