Simmons are probably more aware of what the electronic percussionist wants than any other company. Because of this, they have taken it upon themselves to cover both ends of the market; as well as the middle. SDS7 is of course at the top of the range, with SDS9 in the centre and this month's check set, the 800 at the bottom.

It seems that SDS800 will suffice not just for people without much money to spend, but also for players who haven't quite made up their minds about the electronic revolution, who simply wish to add-on to their acoustic sets. Because the 800 is more than anything an expandable system it consists of four drums, one Pearl-type stand with X adaptor and several leads. 400 has just four toms, also with a single stand, and 200 has just two toms. (The first two sets have the distinct advantage of a run generator which I'll tell you all about momentarily.) The pads are the new generation ones which Simmons spent an awful lot of money developing, and which are now common to all their sets.

The Pads

To recap, Simmons' new pad cost £100,000 to research and develop and resembles the one produced for SDS7 externally, however inside it's completely different. It's made from car bumper type ABS and bowl shaped with a thickish wall. There are strengthening webs inside and a totally different way of mounting the head. Simmons pads used to have a piece of plywood fixed just below the rim of the bowl with a sheet of rubber, or initially riot-shield plastic laid on the top to form a playing surface. The new pads though are sort of air-floating. A piece of rubber is fixed across the top of the hexagonal bowl and a piece of slightly undersized fibre board glued to non-playing side. (The rubber skin acts like a membrane, while the board below stiffens it so that it feels and reacts very much like a real drum.) A plastic rim keeps everything together.

The bass drum is of course hexagonal, with the same sort of membrane stretched over the bowl although in this case only the very central portion is free to move. (There's still a piece of thickish plywood behind the majority of the bass drum head though.)

Spurs are fitted to the sides of the drum as per usual, and made from thick tubing with a solid spike. They locate into completely new retaining clamps made from spring steel which are designed to last. (The smaller tom and snare pads have this facility too to join them to their holder pipes, but now their adjusting screw's located on the top of the pad and set into it; it simply needs an ordinary drum key to operate them. (These cheaper sets have, like the SDS9, jack sockets to carry their good vibes to the brain, and inside we have the usual Piezo transducers and all the stress points for the wires inside are coated in Simmons' usual, non-setting gel. That's it for the pads.

The Brain

The brain is exactly the same size as the SDS9's. It has metal box with controls on the top for just four analogue voices: bass drum, snare and two toms. There's a row of pots for each running in a vertical line which control variously: Sensitivity (with a tell-tale light), Filter Pitch, Filter Sweep, Click Pitch, Tone Pitch, Bend, Decay (short or long), Noise to Tone balance, Click Level and finally Instrument Level. (All the drums don't have the click pitch control, just the bass drum. The snare has Resonance while the toms have something called Second skin instead, exactly like SDS9.) All these parameter controls correspond exactly with those on the more expensive 9 and the second skin serves to round-out the tone by modulating the frequency of the sound source by adding harmonics to the original. All starting positions by the way are marked with a blue dash to help you get a good beginning sound before you start to experiment. (This is a very sensible idea which was first used as far as I know on Seabro's Gig Machine last February. It's an absolute boon to people who are inexperienced in operating synthesised drums sets.)

To the righthand side of these four rows of knobs are the five controls for the run generator together with its on/off switch. This is a facility which Dave Simmons first used on his original SDS3 set all those years ago. What it does is facilitate the playing of multi tom fills from a single tom pad, which can be activated by a pushbutton on the top of the brain or alternatively, by a foot switch. The first control is called Threshold and controls the strength at which the pad must be struck before the run generator kicks in. (You can set it so that a normal stroke will simply sound once, while a slightly harder one will send it on its way through the descending (or ascending) pitches. The next knob controls Step Time ie the period of time the tom voice will stay at a fixed pitch before moving to the next. Run Time is below this and dictates how long the run lasts and Balance is under that. Balance works to change from the settings already selected to Random. The generator will output tom sounds at various different pitches. The final pot is known familiarly as Up-Down. It controls the range of pitches covered by the run, as well as dictating whether it modulates up or down. I must say I was a little sceptical about this feature at first, but once I got used to it I found it great fun and even began to persuade it to do what I wanted it to. It really is the alternative to having several more toms and since it's not automatic and every beat must be struck it's very drummy too. (The skill comes with knowing how to vary the dynamics and keep the tom at the pitch you want before sending it on its way.)

The Sounds

I wasn't able to do an actual A-B test with one of the old SDS 8 sets, but to me this one sounds just the same as them. It's not quite as throaty and ballsy as the new 9 but it ain't bad and only half the price. I think the bass drum sound may have been changed from the 8's but the inclusion of Click pitch is possibly responsible for this. I have to say that the second-skin feature doesn't seem to be so successful on this set but it's certainly an improvement on the old single headed analogue Simmons sound.

The only other controls on the top of the brain are relative to Master volumes. Left and right and a mix control which also works on the headphones. (I'm sure I don't need to explain that the inclusion of a headphone socket turns the set into an invaluable practice tool.)

In the back edge of the controller are jack sockets to facilitate pad input, then pad output, Stereo out, Mix out, Sequencer/trig in via a Din plug and finally foot pedal.

Night thoughts

That's about it for SDS 800. It seems to me to be a better bet to the old 8 because of its run generator, its new pads and last, but not least, its headphone socket. As I said at the beginning, it's expandable and one very valid way to do this would be to buy an SDS1 to use as a snare drum then turn the snare on the actual set into a floor tom. (It works, I've tried it.) This would give you a very flexible five drum set with a digital snare drum and analogue toms and bass.

SIMMONS SDS 800 - RRP: £629.99