Have an expensive mixer and cheap players/controllers?
Or a cheap mixer and expensive players/controllers?
Discuss.
Having started with one of those “DJ in a box” kits from Numark, I’d prefer all of my gear to be built well.
Why the differentiation? 
Curious as well, but mixer is always most important; faders pots sound.
It’s more of a discussion around which you give more attention to in your setup 
‘I want everything to be expensive’ is going to be the obvious answer in an ideal world, but just imagine for a minute your budget wasn’t able to provide that, so where are you pointing your finances first.
Same for me Reese, I’d rather have a good quality mixer as a priority.
My centerpiece is a Xone96 atm.
Very nice, that’s a kind of ‘end of days’ mixer isnt it, you won’t ever need to replace it.
Same. Knew there was a reason I like you 
not enough knobs 
quality everything for me, but for the mixer i have set myself a limit of 2k spend max on a mixer (and has to work with serato directly)
But if you couldn’t afford to go quality everything, which bit are you choosing to invest in first?
In my “career” I’ve played on quite a few unconventional setups. Cassette decks, regular Discman players, mixers that were never intended for DJing… if it can play audio, there’s usually a way. 
I’d pick the feature-packed mixer over the player every time. A decent mixer gives you EQ, routing and, most importantly, the ability to pre-listen to whatever you connect to it.
For me, music selection comes first. Beatmatching, loops and all the other tricks are nice to have, but they come after that.
Agreed, I’d rather have a slightly ‘loose’ mix on a cheaper deck than rough sound quality or faders that arent as smooth etc.
I bet if we asked ourselves this as 18/19/20yr olds just starting out it would be the other way, I know for me personally sound quality and quality of the mixer only became a thing as I got older. It was all about trying to get the best decks years back, probably because we thought it would improve our mixing when we weren’t as good.
Given that I tend to move quickly on faders and potentiometers, I would definitely say mixer.
For me, if the budget only for allowed for good players and a cheap mixer or vice versa, I’d rather play on good players (preferably the SC6000’s) with a cheaper mixer, than a cheap player and good mixer.
I do most of the work on the players, and will generally prioritize a precise pitch, good bending feel, easy looping etc.
It’s one of those things where it depends on what is the situation:
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shorterm thinking e.g. you come to a gig and they are supplying equipment - I would rather have a duo of CDJ3000/SC6000 and a 2ch american audio mixer between them with no FX because I can make that work anyway, all I need is a working cue, EQ and faders
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Longterm e.g. I buying gear for myself and budget allows only one or another - then you should go for the best mixer possible and slap a dualdeck CD player from '90 if needed