One of my favourite tracks of the late 90’s and still an absolute banger…but no idea how to get that mad sound out of any device I have 
Its the main lead sound that runs mostly for the entirety of the track…
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It sort of sounds like an incredibly distorted something-trying-to-be-a-303 doesn’t it?
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If you figure out how to make that sound, what will you do with it? I’m not being clever or trolling, but I’ve wasted so much of my time following tutorials etc. to remake known sounds, and it got me precisely nowhere.
Edit - great track btw
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Will use it as a base for creating other sounds. Its just one of my personal favourites from way back when, and was always interested in understanding how it was made
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Fair enough. As said above, it just sounds similar to a distorted 303. Maybe a 101 cranked through some crazy guitar overdrive? I’d start by using a mono synth with a similar architecture to a 303 and start experimenting. What’s the worst that could happen 
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Pretty sure it’s a distorted 303
Could also be a distorted SH101 playing an acid line
It’s the sequence that gives the sound away. That sounds like a 303 box. Square wave. With some FX. Mostly distortion. 1/2 bar random sequence.
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distortion would only make the sound crunchier though right…? This seems much cleaner than being distortion to my ears. maybe FM modulation…or additive ?? The line sounds like a 303 for sure, but maybe just used the midi from a 303?
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Depends. Maybe they used multiband distortion and only crunched the tops. Maybe they used a send and blended it with the original signal. Lots of things to try.
Sounds like a filtered square wave osc from a TB-303 or SH-101 through a Metal Zone.
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You can FM the filter on a DevilFish modded 303 if that’s a lead you want to follow!
https://soundcloud.com/robin-whittle/devil-fish-tb-303-drastic
https://soundcloud.com/robin-whittle/devil-fish-tb-303-more-drastic
I also think there’s either a send to a delay or (more likely) two different 303 lines in there.
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…take any two osc’s…set them both to running square waves…sync them…an octave apart…detune a little…fm modulation inbetween…maybe some overall wavefolding to taste…
all fx u hear is only the usual make up…not essential for the sound…that’s just the ambience in which it takes place…
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Also remember the time period. They probably only had one, maybe two, FX pedals.
Could be as simple as an overdriven mixer with EQ and a reverb FX pedal.
Studios were pretty limited back then. With that, I’m still amazed at the sounds that came out of that era 
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Not necessarily. Distortion adds harmonics. Good distortion adds a certain non-linearity that can sound a bit like FM or AM.
Also, if you clip a signal hard enough, it turns into a square wave, making things sound more distorted, but if your source material is already a square wave, it can’t really do that, so hard distortion on a square wave can vary from little effect (if all you’re doing is clipping a square wave, you’re not doing much) right through to mental shit by adding harmonics and nonlinearity to a signal.
Don’t know exactly how my guy did it, but you could get real close with a 303, a cheap Boss distortion (Metal Zone or HM-2) pedal and a delay on a send.
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'tis mental
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My take is that it’s probably an SH-101 with some glide(rather than a sliding 303 sequence), probably overdriven into a mixer for saturation. The timbre changes kinda sound like they’re playing with the osc mixer on the fly.
The part at 1:40ish when the panning delay also makes me think there’s a second synth, just playing those low notes, sent to the panning delay
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not sure it is distortion and/or a 303…this guy is using a 303 and a metal zone…not even close in sound to it
Im swaying more in the synthesis direction
Ahh yeah I see what you’re saying. Maybe something with oscillator mod to give it that bell/ringing tone? That opens it up quite a bit lol
Sounds like FM with the modulator amplitude pushed to extremes, and a ratio of 2:1. But as usual, it is anyone’s guess
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Could it have been some kind of effects pedal from the late 90’s like a ring mod or fm pedal??