I go through phases of liking and getting tired of various drum machine sounds. Currently Im in a like 909 for kicks/hh and 808 for toms phase. If I actually had a 909 - I would probably just end up using it for HH and running it through a digital bit reducer.
I know you can just sampling them, but there is nothing like have a physical drum synth to make subtle tweaks to decay etc on HH patterns until it grooves right.
The drum machine of choice for the past few years has however been an Electron MachineDrum UW fed through a dbx 1066 compressor and an SPL Mk2-T vitalizer. If I need cleaner/more natural but still pattern sequenced drums, then I'll sequence my Roland TD12 drum module from the MD.
BTW - many analog synths are quite capable of really nasty kicks
