Hello friends! I’ve finally finished my sample pack of the JoMoX XBASE 999, a somewhat older but no less captivating creation from the cult Berlin-based company.
To look at, the XBASE 999 is very similar to the Alpha Base, JoMoX’s legendary machine. It features a metal chassis, wooden sides and lots of knobs, some of which are clickable, to get hands-on with the sounds. The sequencer is, in typical JoMoX fashion, rather convoluted, but once mastered offers some surprisingly flexible functionality. While it lacks some of the bells and whistles of the Alpha Base, it has a similarly punchy sound, chunky aesthetic and addictive sound design possibilities!
This sample pack contains over 300 individually-recorded and carefully edited One-Shots organised into their respective folders. The Bass Drums, Snare Drums and Toms are analogue, while the remaining percussive instruments are digital samples. All are run through the XBASE 999’s glorious converters which add rich harmonics and subtle character to anything played through them. The samples in particular achieve a super nice crunch when down-tuned.
The pack also contains 16 loops recorded straight from the hardware - these start and stop exactly where they need to in order to contain no audible clicks or pops when restarting.
As always, the pack also contains multiple sample chains – perfect for the Octatrack, Digitakts as well as a wide variety of other samplers.
Finally, there is an Ableton Live Selector Kit (compatible with Suite 12 and above) containing several custom instrument racks from the one-shots, chords and bass samples, each with its own macros for quick control of the important parameters. Great for using with the Push!
Each individual sound has been carefully and respectfully tweaked to gently tame unpleasant resonance, remove super low-end where it’s not required and more or less unify the sample volume across the pack. This ensures the samples sound tight and juicy right out of the box, but allows enough headroom for further processing down the line.
I really enjoyed making this one - it’s always a pleasure to work with JoMoX gear and I hope you enjoy using these sounds as much as I do!
