I’m a big fan of the older techno, think Surgeon circa. late 90s. 909s that sound heavy and crunchy but not distorted to high heaven. I’m looking for a pedal to put my RD-9 through. I want that overdriven sound but I don’t want to lose my low end or a load of noise and hiss. I want my hats to sizzle but not scream. Any suggestions?
Fuck pedals, get an old Boss BX mixer.
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+1 for Boss BX, but the US made Mackie VLZ Pro are also nice. Two different flavours, so to speak.
Check this thread for some inspiration:
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I have a berserk pedal from fjord fuzz pedal which is fine for drum machines and has a pretty wide range of sound as well as a fairly tweakable range of settings internal to the pedal using trim pots and on the face it has a fair amount of compensation/contouring towards what you have described as a loss of low end or a load of noise and hiss. I can’t really get a sound I like pairing it with a synth but sounds good for drum machines and guitar.
check out this youtube video for an idea of how it can sound with a variety of inputs at a variety of levels, this reviewer doesn’t talk and is rather thorough in covering a lot of the pedal range so it’s fairly useful:
you might find that the bx mixer saturation is more of what you’re ultimately after rather than an overdriven sound.
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Analog Heat 
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You want Heat. Though I do agree with Fin - an analog mixer that distorts nicely will do it.
But really, you want Heat. Nothing like punching in a kick/snare/hat/bass pattern, flipping it to high gain and riding the EQ and filter… unless you’re talking about adding in the envelope follower or lfo 
BTW, did I mention how amazing analog heat is?
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wanting heat and having $900 to spend on it are 2 different things.
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Fair enough! I did hesitate with the price when I initially wanted one, but after having one for quite a while now, its one of my most used devices. Well worth the asking price if it fits the job for your system!
But, if you’re rockin the hell out of the rd9, a mixer with effects sends and running individual outputs would be an awesome setup.
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OTO Boum should do the trick!
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I have a Boss BX I’d let go of for cheap if anyone wants it…
But for drum sources I’m a huge fan of Retro Mechanical Labs. He designs his boxes with synths/drum machines in mind and really cares about details and nuances in sound.
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I didn’t mean to downgrade your purchase, analog heat is fucking awesome. if you’re getting your money’s worth out of it, no one can tell you it’s money you shouldn’t have spent.
Slightly OT, but when I want heavy and crunchy but not distorted, I put samples in the Volca Samples. Works every time.
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oh I certainly didn’t take it in any negative way. Trust me, I totally get it, its a lot of money. Hope one finds its way to you in some form one day!
@cLAss85 - I always forget about Boum, and always love the sound of it when I hear it.
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Anybody got examples of the Syntakt processing a 909 or similar?
can you link an example of the sound you’re going for? either a specific track or even just a loop?
And pretty much anything from this mix:
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Here’s what I’ve had success doing in the past, using a combination of mixer, pedal, and routing:
Send your drum machine into any analog mixer with at least one aux send, though preferably one with a bit of character when overdriven. The Boss ones work, but really any old Mackie / Soundcraft will be fine too. Ideally you can separate the kick onto its own channel.
Connect a fuzz pedal to the appropriate aux send and bring it back into the mixer via a normal input channel (you want to have full eq over this). I’ve used various Big Muffs in the past but really anything gnarly will work.
Then send your drum machine signal and / or kick to the fuzz and see what sounds good blending it back in with the original. This way you maintain the clean punch but you have some nice big boom boom to work with too. You may find yourself preferring just sending the kick to the fuzz or just sending everything else but the kick. Only your ears will know.
The best part about this method is this stuff should cost less than $300. Any decent low end mixer will be fine, and most fuzz pedals will be fine, though obviously there’s a lot of room to experiment and play.
Hope this helps!
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after hearing what you were going for, I messed around a little and this was the closest I got to that analog 909 kick using using what I had available:
volca beats > split 3 ways into $10 mini mixer > dry signal on one channel > next through digitone overdrive at 13.00 with reverb at 3.00 on the next channel> third ran through the VCF on my rocket set to high pass with cutoff at 11 o’clock and the resonance around 3 o’clock.
just mixed by ear a little until it sounded ok and recorded each individual part (including the mix of the 3) straight line-in to a little zoom recorder at the same levels they sat at in the mix. then moved those into audacity and made a file - took the blended signal and added a compressor to it for the last example but nothing else is processed beyond the analog signal chain I described.
first is dry, next is saturated, third is the vcf filtered saturated signal, then there’s the blend of the 3, and last is the blend of the 3 with audacitys compressor applied.
It’s a volca beats so, you know, curb your expectations - but I think it shows there’s more going on to that sound you want than just a distortion pedal. Also, that with a little messing around, you can probably get something acceptably similar. I gotta say, my fuzz pedal sounded like shit when I tried to use it to process this type of kick sound, and if you hadn’t suggested the syntakt I might have given up on it but I tried digitone and it worked ok.
Some of the kicks in those mixes you posted are more heavily filtered than others but I just went with what I could get to sound good without trying too hard to recreate any one specific kick sound because in the first and second video they all sounded pretty good and had a similar quality, just with varying levels of filter and compression.
anyways, if this is useful good, and if not then it’s already done so oh well lol. if it matters, put on headphones to listen.
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Thanks a lot for the effort, you’ve managed to get a sound that’s on its way there.
For ease of jamming, maybe samples is the way!
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i havent tried it, but Roger That seems like the perfect creative dirt machine for something like this
i would suggest the analog rytm. very dirty
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