Yes, I've tried that too, but I feel I'm in the need for some fresh sounds and inspiration. Started out with a standard noise snare, and there was tweaking... and tweaking... and then some of the earlier generations of the sound started to sound better than the more processed ones. And then there was tweaking...
I'm sure some of the purists and technical perfercionists prefer to do it this way and I like it to some extent, but it can become tedious.
I believe you can get almost any snare or kick-sound by using some standard 808/909kits and get loose with filters and layering and maybe som other effects to loosen/tighten them etc.
A sample CD is a nice shortcut to get closer to what I want though
I usually come up with "kits" with drums/bass/pads that I think fit well together and then I go create. Some instruments are replaced with new songs but by just replacing some of the instruments I can tailor the new sound to fit the rest of the kit.
It's more difficult to start in the other end, like finding a nice preset which sounds awesome but doesn't fit into my existing setup. Then you maybe have to replace many of the other instruments to fit that particular sound.
Doing stuff in other genres than I usually do is even more demanding, but is really cool when it's starting to sound like intended to.
