Just woke up from a fever dream of my black faceplate machinedrum mk 2uw+ I sold years ago for 1k thinking it would be replaced eventually by elektron or other companies…
So far, no luck eh…
I got the syntakt hoping to scratch that itch and the digital engines don’t do anything for me, the FM drums were what the MD shined at imo, not the “tr” like drums.
I have the rytm and I’m mostly using it for processing samples from my rd9 and rd8. I love the rytm but I don’t really use the analog engines beyond mixing in with samples (as God intended?)
Have any of you found you could with a clean conscience replace the MD with other devices? Frankly I loved just slamming 10+ different tonal fm drum synths in a loop… It wasn’t really a 909 or an 808 but what it was - was, and still is unique imo.
Units I haven’t tried that come to mind
Modor dr2 (flexible drum engines, individual outs, hands on) everything looks solid except the price.
Perkons (different beast entirely, but still a digital based drum synth engine that’s flexible)
Erica synths lxr (everyone seems to love this unit - seems the most machinedrum like in concept and execution but it looks a little fiddly and I haven’t heard a demo that isn’t just chaotic harsh sounds.)