It’s Mr. G not M.G.
His name is Colin McBean but if you’re looking for his music then search for Mr G
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I listened to his Mr G Boiler Room London Live Set,
it’s true that his saturated kick is very good.
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In his interviews he mentions getting out of hand with the overdriven sound on purpose that night. He says he was maybe a bit tipsy but that he also knew the recording g was right off the board and that people would be trying to cop the recording. He was playing some different versions of tunes and unreleased stuff in that set. It is pretty epic and one of the things that got me hooked on his sound and style.
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Recorded into a Denon tape deck from ‘81. It’s called a DR-L1. It’s a lovely deck.
Sound wise the kick is being ran through a Marantz PMD 740 an Analog Heat.
I used this infinite tape loop I made the other day. It is a general consumer tape. After printing it to tape I stuck it back into the Marantz, ran it back through the Heat and into AudioShare on the iPad.
The sound is very different once printed to tape.
And I think that is where Mr. G gets a sum of his secret sauce from.
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Hello - drum obsessive here.
I use soundtoys radiator and max it out then dial the wet out back to 5-10%
Legowelts ableton thingys also work well.
U-he’s satin can also work well.
I tend to layer a clean 909 or 808 kick under dirty kick samples and EQ.
I found recording to actual tape had mixed results.
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Simple, just hide it in an old VCR enclosure. Good luck on your future acquisition.
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So gang, I’m still trying to figure out how he gets his rides to sound like sleigh bells. I’ve been after that sound for like the past 15 years. Low velocity on the down beat followed by a high on the up beat. Compression, reverb, etc, etc. I’ve read all the interviews and he simply says it’s an old 909 sample that he’s been using for a long time. Maybe I’m just over thinking it. Perhaps it sounds that way because how it sits in the mix…but it’s driving me mad. I’ve had nice results with a 606 and 707 though. Small victories.
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Definitely just sample his tunes and steal his kicks 
…all those miracles of gainstaging…all the magic of filters and resonance…and that endless distorted reality, lost in saturation, keep on fighting in the neverending battle of clippers versus limiters…loudness versus dynamics…
somewhere inbetween waits the “perfect” result to be finally found for each 'n everyone of us…
meanwhile, at some point, it drives everybody nuts…
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I may have(rather Hannes has) part of the solution in this video here:
At 5:28 he begins to touch on the 909 ride. He points out a resonance that i never noticed before but that I can’t unhear ever since. I find the cut he makes gets it more into the pleasant “sleighbell” realm. The video on the whole is a good watch.
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Or I could work on refining my craft, rather than biting someone else’s outright. There’s a distinction, IMO, between inspiration and copying.
He uses the same 909 sample but he has resampled it a ton of times. So it is very tough to say what he did exactly. I would suggest running it through different stuff like a Bx800 style mixer that distorts nicely, or a pedal or whatever. Just see what happens, and then sample that. Then maybe run that through a comb filter that’s just adding a little. An Octatrack would be a great machine for this stuff if you have one.
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An open kickdrum is always fair game. Also, Mr. G samples shit loads! I bet he would/has nabbed kicks.
I saw Dave Clarke asked how he made a kick in one of his red series tunes. The answer? Chopped it put of a Joey Beltram tune. Dance music is built on this kind of thing.
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I love the advent, one of the best techno acts ive seen live
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Right on. Great bit of advice there. Thank you.
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thanks for the tip! i’m diggin The Advent
Boss dr660 plus some mixer “natural” saturation
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Because I know you’ve been wondering too @the_PMO, I messaged him on the dreaded FB. Hadn’t been on there in a long time, and had to grab an image, and boom! There he was in my suggestions thing. So I did the only sensible thing I could think of. Messaged him a long, pathetic, creepy fan message, asking him how? So we’ve got a 50/50 chance of finding out. Either he blocks me, or he answers the one question I’ve had for over 15 years. Excited? Of course we are.
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Boy oh boy, guess who amazingly responded to me today?!
Also, guess what he told me?
You were just about right on the money. He told me that after he resamples he changes the velocity and turns up the hi frequencies to find the cut through tone. Now he said he does this on the sample page, and seeing he’s a samurai with the MPC, I assume he’s referring to the sample page within the MPC. Anyways, you more or less to a degree nailed it. Funny enough, he also said that he gets asked that a lot. No surprisingly.
Furthermore, asked him about whether or not he ever thought of switching out the MPC. His big thing is the individual outs of his MPC. He needs those 8 outs so he can plug them into his mixer and boost/cut the sound where needed, just like djing. The limitations present with his MPC have also forced him to be sure that all 10 or so channels he uses are killer and not filler. Thus quoting the ancient golden rule of every religion “lessith is moreith”. Okay maybe not that last part.
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