I meant to post this for 808 day… but someone turned on my internal Swing setting. Sorry for the delay!
Back in the day I bought the BOSS DR-55 Dr. Rhythm (1980) and the Roland TR-606 (1981), but couldn’t afford the TR-808 Rhythm Composer. With the other two drum machines, it seemed surplus to my requirements.
Subsequently, any time I wished to dip into the classic 808 sound, I turned to samples. Michael Fischer put together an excellent collection of these, way back in 1994. To my mind this is still the best effort, though I cannot claim to have compared it to the dozens of other packs on the market. The main virtue of Fischer’s recordings is that the signal chain is clean. So many other packs are pre-processed through the engineer’s favourite compressor or mixer. But I prefer my original samples to be free of someone else’s sonic signature.
I took Fischer’s sounds, which are freely available from Technopolis as 16-bit 44.1 kHz mono files… so no editing needed to be done.
I have organised the sounds in the same order as on the original machine. Here’s a list using the standard abbreviations, noting the tonal modifications that are available.
- bass drum = BD = tone, decay
- snare drum = SD = tone, snappy
- low tom = LT = tuning
- mid tom = MT = tuning
- hi tom = HT = tuning
- low conga = LC = tuning
- mid conga = MC = tuning
- hi conga = HC = tuning
- rim shot = RS
- claves = CL
- hand clap = CP
- maracas = MA
- cowbell = CB
- cymbal = CY = tone, decay
- open hi hat = OH = decay
- closed hi hat = CH
In order to compile these into sample chains, I decided on one file for the cymbals alone, since these are much longer than the other samples. If you don’t need them, you can save the memory. The 25 original files, with variance in tone and decay, were reduced to 15. This is more than enough variety, especially considering how you can post-process on the Octatrack.
The remaining drum hits were compiled into a second file. I used 12 BD, 16 SD, 4 each of the toms, 3 each of the congas, 4 OH, and one each of the sounds that have no native tonal adjustment: RS, CL, CP, MA, CB, CH. The result is 59 sounds.
Mostly I omitted variants that were already extremely close to those provided. Fischer had sampled with each dial at 0, 25%, 50%, 75% and all the way up. I found that the 75% settings were superfluous.
The final step was to bring the sample chains into the Octatrack, to slice and create .OT files.
I am making these files available as my first real contribution to this forum. I know you already have 808 sounds but these are superior. 
TR-808 sample chains:
808-kit: 59 drum samples in 10.7 MB
808-CY: 15 cymbals in 5.4 MB