So a few weeks ago I picked up an RD9. It’s a nice sounding drum machine that is fun to program, but I need a bit more from the sound. I need to dirty it up a little and make the sounds slam and growl a bit more. An obvious contender is the AH but it’s twice the price of the RD9. I also need to keep things simple - I work without a computer and just with 2-3 bits of gear on my desk for my very own stay-at-home when the kids are in bed improvised techno party…
So, what pedals do you like using on your drums? All comments are welcome, but I’m mostly interested in hearing about your distortion/overdrive/preamp type stuff. Maybe you have a secret drum machine weapon, maybe you know about that classic Mackie desk in a pedal that’s been overlooked or maybe you are a gabber freak who knows how to make those kick drums slap (as the kids say these days). Sound examples appreciated if you have some.
Can’t speak to the slamming/growl-inducing stuff too much, but in the relatively experimental realm, I love what the Chase Bliss Audio MOOD can do to drums (and anything tbh). Link to a track that is only a Volca Drum into MOOD plus a chord from Digitone every 32 bars. Definitely shared elsewhere but aye, one of my first thoughts for pedals and drums.
Think I’ve seen mention on this forum but I like what I’ve heard of drums ran into the Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water for slightly driven, dusty tape vibe. Was reminded by Ricky Tinez’s most recent vid where he runs Syntakt through it.
I’ve used a Strymon Deco extensively on my Elektron Machinedrum and Digitakt. It adds a bit of punch / grit with the tape saturation and does a nice roll off of some of high frequencies. It’s pretty solid.
Nothing made my Acidlab Drumatix or TT-606 sound better than the Bogner Harlow transformer boost+comp
Search this forum for Harlow if you want to see existing discussion, hear examples.
I also quite like the Eventide Blackhole for a master density verb, but I am often tempted by dual serial reverb pedals from Source Audio and others.
The only pedal i have… erica fusion box. (Apart from a4 1. difficult to find something a4 can not do, but always with a bit effort and not so big sweet spot)
im envious of that old mackie, i have a newer one, also stopped working ok.
EHX reverb gives awesome natural result with percussive sound. (and i don’t like them that much with guitars)
merys polymoon is great, can be elegant or total glitchiness. I suppose the new delay they just released should be awesome.
digitech are great too.
Got a fireworx too, very powerful, the macro button is not that hard to configure and can give awesome result. Most of algorythm are very powerful, but sound very unatural for me, can be awesome on some context. (was awesome to split a signal, sending the to different filters, and have different FX for the different layers).
Dreadbox has some demo videos for their Kinematic pedal in which they run various drum machines through it to pretty good effect. I used to slam my TR-606 and SR-16 through an old Boss HM-2 back in the day.
HM-2 is a classic, also used by Prince back in the day. Also bass distortion pedals like Boss ODB-3 are great. Problem is, there are next to no stereo distortion pedals so a stereo filter or an old mixer would be better. Both cost a lot more than a used ODB-3.
