We are the music makers - producers?

Holy shit, sounds really good!

There are a lot of factors. Both machines have a lot of different sounds depending on the position of the pots and condition of the pots. As well as the swing introduced by 'poor' midi timing there's the slight differences between hits which come from the analog nature of the machine. You can build all that into a sample player but I wouldn't try to draw any conclusions about the machines in total from the samples.

I've had 2 of each side by side in the studio and they had slightly different sound characteristics too.

I should add that if you sample the 909/808 with the SP1200 you get the next gen sound of at that time. So it's true that increased processing of the 909/808 sound has contributed to a range of more modern kicks.

I'm not sure the 909/808 are that relevant to most 'new' electronic genres but they certainly help if you want to write electro, acid, detroit tech etc. since that was the sound at the time. The very early stuff was recorded to tape anyway so there was bound to be some compression going on there.

i’m no expert but this feels similar to the op-z, at a similar price point? I’d appreciate the physical channel volume controls but not sure if it matches the tricks of my op-z?