Video by Kilohearts via YouTube
Source
Kilohearts on Plugin Boutique
The Roland TB-303 was supposed to be a bass guitar simulator. But it was terrible at simulating bass guitar. Imagine being terrible even compared to an actual bass guitar player. That’s how terrible it was. Within a few short years Roland discontinued the wretched thing, and the remaining units were sold cheaply.
Soon the price would go rocketing up again though, as pioneering DJs and producers in and around the Chicago house scene repurposed the 303 as a squelchy lynchpin of the newly emerging Acid sound. The basic sequencer and limited sonic palate laid a solid and characteristic foundation for layers of sonic experimentation and endless pounding synth jams.
You can make this sound yourself with ease in Phase Plant. Create a nice pumping 8th-note sequence in your DAW using lots of weird semitones. Don’t put a major third in there, whatever you do. Not cool. Then choose the simple square or sawtooth wave in an analog generator and use either filtering and distortion in the generators section or a Nonlinear Fillter Snapin in the effects section to sculpt the squelch. Add glide to further liquefy your tone. The higher the Q on the filter, the more goopy and disgusting it’ll sound.