Tech house is still the busiest lane in club music in 2026. From basement nights in Berlin and London to festival main stages, it’s everywhere. And nearly every tech house producer I know has Xfer Serum 2 somewhere in the project.
Quick context if you skipped the update: Serum 2 shipped in March 2025 as a free upgrade for Serum 1 owners. Three oscillators instead of two, five engines including granular and spectral, new FX buses, and a built-in sequencer. Plenty of power for tech house — but the factory presets are built for everything at once, not for this genre specifically.
That’s where dedicated packs come in. Full disclosure: I make preset packs for a living, so I’m biased. But below is exactly what I’d load for a tech house session, plus what each pack is actually good for.
If you’d rather build the sounds yourself from init, I wrote a separate walkthrough on making a tech house bass in Serum 2. This post is for the days when you need the sound now.
What Makes a Great Tech House Serum Preset?
Before the list, it helps to know what you’re listening for. Tech house has narrow sonic requirements, and a preset that works for future bass will usually fail here.
The Bass
The bassline is the heartbeat of the genre. It needs to be punchy, slightly distorted, and rhythmic. Unlike slap house basses with their aggressive pitch envelopes, tech house basses sit in a tighter window: solid sub below 80 Hz, plus a focused mid-range bite around 200–400 Hz that gives the note its identity.
The best bass presets have a natural bounce built in — subtle filter or amplitude movement that keeps the loop alive without heavy automation.
Chord Stabs
The off-beat stab is tech house’s signature. It has to be tight, percussive, and harmonically clear: short attack, fast decay, just enough sustain to suggest the chord. Too long and it blurs the groove. Too short and it loses harmonic identity. The sweet spot is a punchy transient with a clean 200–400 ms decay.
Leads
Tech house leads are quieter characters than EDM leads. They live in the mid-range, filtered and evolving, and they’re about hypnotic movement rather than big melodic hooks. Look for slow LFO modulation on the filter cutoff — that breathing quality is what keeps a loop interesting over four to eight bars.
Atmospheric Pads
Pads here are heard more than felt. Wide in the stereo field, sitting just under the surface of the mix, adding harmonic depth without asking for attention. Long attack and release, a bit of baked-in reverb, and a frequency range that stays politely above the kick and bass.
The Best Serum 2 Preset Packs for Tech House in 2026
1. FISHLAKE Vol.1 — Tech House Serum 2 Presets & Sample Pack
If you only buy one tech house pack this year, make it this one. FISHLAKE Vol.1 combines Serum 2 presets with a full sample pack — drum loops, one-shots, melodic elements — all designed around the same sonic identity.
The basses are the strongest part: punchy, rhythmically alive, and sitting in the low-mids without muddying the mix. The stabs have the tight, percussive decay tech house demands, and the pads are spacious without taking over. Because everything was designed together, building a full track from it goes fast.
Best for: complete track building, when you want presets and samples that speak the same musical language.
2. FISHLAKE Vol.2 — Tech House Serum 2 Presets
The follow-up, FISHLAKE Vol.2, pushes the palette further. Where Vol.1 leans into classic tech house warmth, Vol.2 goes harder and more modern: tighter basses, more aggressive stabs, leads with a sharper bite.
The two volumes work well together. Vol.1 handles the foundation, Vol.2 adds edge and variation. Running both gives you enough material for dozens of tracks without repeating sounds.
Best for: harder, more contemporary tech house.
3. Techsonic — Tech-House Presets for Xfer Serum 2
Techsonic takes a different angle. It leans into the rhythmic, almost mechanical side of the underground club sound: driving basses with strong transients, minimal pads that sit far back, and percussion-like synth textures that add rhythmic complexity without harmonic clutter.
If your references are Fisher, Chris Lake, or John Summit — locked-in, functional, dance-floor-first — this one was built for you. Less melody, more groove.
Best for: underground club sounds, groove-focused and minimal tech house.
4. Melomagic — House Xfer Serum 2 Presets Mega Pack
For maximum variety in one download, there’s Melomagic. It covers the full house spectrum — deep house, tech house, future house, melodic house, afro house — with 100+ presets in one cohesive library.
The tech house section holds its own: basses that balance warmth and punch, and leads that borrow the melodic quality of melodic house without losing the functional, hypnotic edge. If you produce across several house sub-genres, this replaces three or four separate packs.
Best for: producers who move between house sub-genres and want one library that covers it.
5. Serum 2 House Presets Vol.1
Serum 2 House Presets Vol.1 is the starting point if you’re new to house sound design in Serum 2. It covers the fundamentals — classic chord stabs, driving basses, lush pads, expressive leads — with a clean, modern production quality.
It’s less specialized than the FISHLAKE series but more broadly useful. Combine it with Techsonic or FISHLAKE and you’ve got a complete tech house toolkit.
Best for: building a foundational house preset library.
And if the budget is zero right now, grab the free Serum 2 presets pack — 250+ sounds across genres, including basses and stabs you can drop straight into a tech house session to test the workflow before spending anything.
How to Get the Most Out of Tech House Presets in Serum 2
Good presets are the starting point, not the finish line. Here’s what actually makes them work in a track.
Always Tweak the Filter
The single most useful move on any preset is adjusting filter cutoff and resonance. A preset with the filter closed 30% is a different sound from the same preset wide open. This one habit makes your library feel three times bigger than it is.
Use Macro Controls
Professional packs map macros to the parameters that matter most. Spend five minutes learning what each macro does before using a preset in a track. The most interesting sounds often live at macro extremes you wouldn’t reach by accident. If macros and mod routing are still fuzzy for you, my Serum 2 modulation guide covers the whole system.
Automate the Filter in the DAW
Static presets feel static. Automate the filter cutoff over 8–16 bars for gradual build and release. Even a subtle 20% sweep over 8 bars keeps a loop moving without being obvious.
Layer Basses for Sub and Mid
Most big tech house basses are two layers: a clean sine for the sub (below 80 Hz) and a distorted, harmonically rich preset for the mids (80–500 Hz). Keep the sub mono, give the mid layer a little stereo width. You get full control over the low end and cleaner, louder masters.
Sidechain Everything to the Kick
Non-negotiable in this genre. Sidechain the bass, pads, and any mid-range elements to the kick. That pumping, breathing quality is mostly sidechain: fast attack (1–5 ms), medium release (100–200 ms), 6–12 dB of gain reduction. Without it, even great presets feel static.
Keep Your Mix Mono Below 150 Hz
Check the mix in mono regularly. Club systems are often mono-summed below 150–200 Hz. A bass that sounds huge in stereo can vanish in mono if the low end carries stereo information. Keep kick and bass strictly mono and your mixes will translate in a club.
Building a Complete Tech House Track: A Workflow Example
Here’s a realistic run from empty session to export, using the packs above:
- Session setup (5 min): 128 BPM, A minor, four-on-the-floor kick loaded
- Bass (15 min): load a FISHLAKE bass preset, tune to the root, adjust filter cutoff, sidechain to the kick
- Chord stabs (10 min): load a Techsonic stab, program an off-beat pattern, add light filter automation
- Lead (10 min): load an atmospheric lead from Melomagic, write a minimal 4-bar phrase, automate the filter over 8 bars
- Drums (15 min): clap on 2 and 4, hi-hat pattern, percussion loops from the FISHLAKE sample pack
- Arrangement (20 min): intro → build → drop → break → second drop → outro, 6–7 minutes total
- Mix pass (15 min): EQ, sidechain check, reverb sends, stereo width on highs only
Roughly 90 minutes from empty session to export-ready track. That’s the practical argument for genre-specific presets: they remove the sound design hours, not the creative decisions.
Tech House in 2026: What’s Changed
The genre has shifted noticeably over the past two years. The Fisher/Chris Lake wave of punchy, sample-driven tech house has given way to something more nuanced, borrowing from melodic house and afro house: more harmonic complexity, more sophisticated arrangement, a higher production bar overall.
So a good 2026 pack has to cover both ends: the hard, functional groove of classic tech house and the melodic depth of its current form. That duality was the design brief for the FISHLAKE series and Melomagic. And if your taste drifts further toward the melodic end, my melodic techno in Serum 2 guide picks up where this post stops.
FAQ: Serum 2 Presets for Tech House
Do Serum 1 presets work in Serum 2?
Yes. Serum 2 opens Serum 1 presets and they sound the same. The upgrade itself was free for Serum 1 owners, so there’s no reason to stay on the old version. All the packs in this post are built for Serum 2.
How do I install tech house presets in Serum 2?
Drop the preset folder into Serum 2’s user presets directory, or use the menu: Presets → Show Serum Presets Folder. Full step-by-step with screenshots is in my Serum 2 preset installation guide.
Are these presets royalty-free?
Yes. Everything from Monosounds is 100% royalty-free: use the sounds in commercial releases, client work, and streams without crediting or paying anything extra. The only thing you can’t do is resell the presets themselves.
What BPM and key should I produce tech house in?
Most tech house sits between 124 and 128 BPM, with 126–128 being the current club standard. Key matters less than groove, but minor keys dominate — A minor, F minor, and G minor are everywhere. Pick one, keep the bassline in a tight one-octave range, and let the rhythm do the work.
Final Thoughts
Serum 2 is arguably the most capable wavetable synth on the market. But that capability only turns into good tech house when the presets were built for the genre’s specific demands.
The five collections here — FISHLAKE Vol.1, FISHLAKE Vol.2, Techsonic, Melomagic, and Serum 2 House Presets Vol.1 — are the most focused tech house sound design we make. Start with the one that matches your references and build from there.
Not ready to spend? Start with the 250+ free Serum 2 presets, make a loop tonight, and come back for the genre packs when you hit the limits. That’s the honest order of operations anyway.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
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