Well Adam for me I would be just going through some kicks again and trying to find firstly one that satisified what I was looking for.  It might be hard to describe it.  A nice rounded sound with a little transient edge at the start to give it some rhythmical impact.  A kick that has some sort of delicate quality about it to match the rest of the drum machine sound and the overall general quality of the laid backness of the tune itself.  If I was close I would maybe layer two sounds then to get the total sound I was looking for. Maybe the transient edge could be one sound and the rounded sustained part a second sound. That would be my approach I think.
 
One thing I do know compared to the old days and that is now there are ten million kicks to choose from whereas back then I only had a few. The Roland TR808 sounds, Linn drum or Oberheim DMX drum machine and maybe that was about it for me. I just worked with what I had and got into more EQ things to get the sound I was after. But keep looking through your library of kick sounds because the perfect kick is probably in there and you have just not found it yet!
 
I think if you have a lot of single shot drum sounds it is important to have them organised well into a library and browser situation so you can easily get at them and hear them effeciently.
 
Danny has nailed it in terms of changing up things if a part or sound suddenly becomes exposed for whatever reason. Then automation is your friend here as it means you can just alter things in the areas of the tune where things might get exposed. For example a solo acoustic guitar intro might have a little more low end in the sound but when the band comes in that acoustic may need its HPF activated a little more etc.. Whatever you do automation wise the trick is to do it silently so the listener does not know what you have done.  It might just be a simple level change which often works well or a HPF cutoff frequency sliding around at the required point.
 
I do it quite a bit in bigger productions. Change the bass tone for example from intros, verses and choruses etc. It can be slight but very effective. It all adds to the drama!

Thank you ALL so much for your help on this.  I really picked up a lot of useful knowledge here.   I am trying to not use Samples, but more drum synthesis.... maybe my art of synthesis in general is lacking (for now), but yes I know what you mean.  A lot of my tunes are calm/chill (that was just a sample i threw together in 2 minutes as an example). 

Again - thanks so much to everyone!

Some of the best electronic drum sounds I have are from the "Driven Machine Drums" sample pack, which is unfortunately now sold out (he only sold a limited number). They were all lovingly sampled from classic drum machines and processed to sound great out of the box (and they really do). You can read about them and listen to some demos here.  http://www.drivenmachinedrums.com/ 
 
I know it sounds like BS but these samples just immediately sound great when I load them into Battery or Geist. Especially the kicks. I know what you mean about electronic kicks being too boomy - I've never found that with these. Granted there are some 'chest beaters' in there if that's what you want, but there are also some excellent snappy kicks in there as well and I virtually never have to do anything with 'em, they just fit right in the mix. 
 
The guy did offer some free 909 samples on his Facebook page a while ago, you can download them here:
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qaj7brm49j58awx
 
He also offered another small collection of free electronic drum samples here:
 
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?eh36o4st2k69un8
 
Might be worth checking out. They'll either work for you or they won't. 
 
Personally I have to high pass the crap out of a lot of "quality" commercial drum and bass samples, Trilian basses for example have loads of boominess in them. I guess the idea being it's there if you want it, and it's no big deal to dial it down if you don't. 

the 808 kick pitched down in a sampler years ago was used to make sub bass in some hardcore and jungle tunes... or processed again after that.
 
but it's a case of layering 2 kicks a lot now.. the lower element of say an 808 but an acoustic drum has the higher range better sorted.. not used battery in a while BUT you could link 2 pads IRC.. so you have the low-kick and the hi-kick to trigger together and just trim the fat off each so they don't clash in the middle.. so use "as is" or record out and bring back in as one drum..
 
computer music did something with noisa ages ago, and the bloke was doing the same thing.. using the low end off the drum machine kick + the slightly weaker accoustic kick to replace the high end..have a  lot of sample libs that have decent kicks , snares..
 
was funny years ago, someone talking to me about house and I was making some with a friend.. using both the 808 and 909 , and only elements of each .. ah you used an 808.. no mention of the 909 ;-)
 
vengeance do nice libs for single hits , but don't own any .. maybe I do as included product.. dunno.. but it's all trim-able, but the extra bit of "fat" is always handy when side chaining.. although I saw a video with jon b and he just uses a low end sound to force the gap instead.
 
 
 

If you're after electronic drum sounds and samples aren't providing what you want then maybe it's time to switch to a true drum synthesiser rather than a sample player.

If you want to stay in software, Waldorf Attack is pretty good and allows full control over pretty much every parameter and Nepheton/Drumazon do the 808/909 thing very well. It's also possible to programme a lot of electronic percussion using the synths Sonar comes with. Sound on Sound did a useful article on drum synthesis some time ago in their synth basics series. Google should find you the relevant article(s).

Sonar's percussion strip can also radically transform drum sounds using it's attack and decay tansient controllers.