The Vestax Corporation of Japan began in 1977 as a designer and manufacturer of electronic guitars. In the 1980s Vestax introduced a series of cassette based multitracks to challenge established products from Fostex, Yamaha and Tascam's portastudios. Today, as music making continues to evolve in this high-tech age, Vestax are more commonly known for innovative sound developments such as signal processors, DJ Mixers, professional turntables and Compact Disc players. By concentrating their efforts into the needs of nightclubs and Disc jockeys, their mixers have become favourites of international DJs such as Carl Cox, DJ QBert and Cut Chemist. Mixers such as the various iterations of the PMC-05pro have become staples of the Hip Hop DJ community, and they also have manufactured signature models for DJ's such as Carl Cox and DJ Qbert. During the late 1990s Vestax launched a new flagship range of professional DJ turntables. The PDX models had higher specifications than the two market leading products from Technics and were priced in direct competition with the Technics SL1210/SL1200.