THE STORY SO FAR. Having made a few bob with his Claptrap, mild-mannered Dave Simmons pioneers the electronic drum with the prototype SDS3 in 1979. In a few years, full production of the improved SDS5 takes pop music fashion by storm. Suddenly cylinders are out and hexagons are in. For the next few years Simmons have this new and exciting market virtually to themselves, but by 1983 rival kits begin to appear just as record-makers begin to tire of analogue-based drum sounds.

Simmons' repost to these pretenders to their throne is a double blow dealt to either end of the market in the Spring of 1984. For budget-conscious drummers who've just woken up and found themselves in the mid 80s there's the SDS8, a repackaged version of the 5 with improved pads. For the more discerning player with more cash to splash there's the SDS7 with its 100-kit memories and a choice of sound sources, analogue or digital, plus the dangled carrot of imminent sound sampling and chip-blowability for any of its modules.

Undaunted, other makers flood the market with a profusion of new and upgraded models. Pads of every conceivable shape (including the innocent hexagon) are now available. The Linn 9000 heralds a new generation of competitive drum machines with its touch-sensitive and programmable pads built into its facia. The swift evolution of MIDI meanwhile opens the way for computer-based systems like the Greengate and its potentially infinite store of sounds to be played with pads across a wide dynamic range, and for these patterns also to be stored in its memory in real- or step-time.

All of which brings us to the latest backhand in the product tennis match being conducted between Simmons and all-comers, the SDS9. Will it hit the net? Will it be an outright winner, or will it be smartly returned by the opponents in a new and improved form? Read on...

The first bonus mark for the SDS9 must be its pads which are a distinct improvement on those marketed with the SDS7 and 8 which, although they were better than the unrelenting jolt of the SDS5, hardly simulated the response of a real drum, giving what could best be described as a rubbery "bok!" whenever they were struck.

Much thought has apparently gone into eliminating this problem. I was even shown a few dismembered prototypes at the demo by way of proof — surely only the most unsporting of traditionalists would pooh-pooh the result, which is as close as any imitation has yet managed to get to the feel of the original flapping skin.

This is created by means of a floating playing surface which "gives" as much as a quarter-of-an-inch if gently pushed and which is attached to the rest of the pad by a circular piece of moulded rubber. Played with a stick it feels like a slackly-tuned snare drum and is reassuringly quiet, eliminating the tiresome necessity of programming the 7 or 8 at a loud enough volume to be certain that the attack was in the sound itself and not emanating from the pad.

Also dispensed with are the old XLR connections, which have been dumped in favour of the jack socket — a cheaper if somewhat less professional choice that will at least force current Simmons owners to get soldering if they want to use these pads with their present racks. The rest of the pad is made of a substance of mystery origin which, I was told by the chaps at Simmons, is used in The Space Programme. This means that any owner can now contemplate playing the SDS9 whilst reentering the Earth's atmosphere without fear of burning up. Good news for all astral travellers, I'm sure.

This apparently indestructible material has other uses, of course, one of which is that it forms a rim separate from the playing surface. The SDS9 snare has two sensors, one in its middle and one connected to the rim, the idea being that you can then play a middle-only stroke, a rimshot, or a cross stick, as the rack contains three correspondingly recorded PROMS. So at this stage we need to investigate the control unit.

En route we pause to note further bonus marks for the bass drum pad which has its own, more springy floating surface; its spur-retaining wing-nuts are positioned on the same side as the player where they can be easily adjusted and don't interfere with the sleek lines on the audience side. Also, a thumbs-up for the reversion to Pearl hardware (which you can read about in One Two number 21).

The SDS9 control unit "rack" is more of a Jekyll-and-Hyde device, with good and bad elements to be found in the one body. Most welcome must be the socket which will allow drummers to deafen themselves and no-one else. All they will require for programming is a pair of headphones. Thanks to another clever innovation, dual-function buttons on the module can be used to trigger the individual sounds, so even the sticks and pads are saved a beating. For those with delicate fingers there's even an auto-trigger function which operates across the dynamic range for component drums or all five: snare drum, bass drum and three toms.

From the SDS7 racks which wound their way back to St Albans for repair, the designers discovered that very few of the 100 potential kit memories had been tampered with. Yes most players retained their factory presets. So the SDS9 has 20 programmable memories, a drastically reduced number, and 20 factory presets which can't be interfered with. To select one of these kits you can avail yourself of the new footswitch, a device which steps through five kits, depending on which of the four banks you have first chosen (labelled A to D). This is a huge improvement on the SDS7 version, which, as an owner, I can personally describe as a pain in the neck. As a sufferer in the Scrambled And Wiped Memory Department, I'm equally pleased to see a cassette dump and loading facility and a MIDI interface which can only broaden the appeal of the kit, allowing the SDS9 owner to trigger sounds from any compatible keyboard (or vice versa).

So what of the sounds? The snare, with its three replaceable PROMS and two pad sensors is a noble attempt to create the three basic elements of the modern acoustic drum. Separation in triggering is excellent. If you tap a cross-stick in the conventional manner, a cross-stick is all you get, and only if you catch rim and middle accurately will both sounds occur. The problem here, of course, is that a cross-stick sound alone is a more wooden "tick" than the metallic "crack" of a rim-shot, so the combination of the two sounds is interesting if unusual. Exploiting this novel blend by including a timbale rimshot chip in the test set produced a Bill Bruford-like "tang" which surely shows the way ahead: to invent new sounds rather than imitate old ones.

The bass drum is perhaps the most exciting development since its sound is software-based. No chips or filters here but a clean, well-defined punch with a tight bass end and the best overall shape of any Simmons bass drum yet made. The basic sound can be adjusted with the pitch, click and thump parameters, but remains eminently recordable and unlikely to separate cone from coil in a PA rig thanks to uncontrollable overtones.

With the toms the packaging may be different but the sound remains the same. Same as the SDS8, same as the SDS5. Analogue. Bearing in mind the advances that have been made with the other drums, this is disappointing. Despite better overall specifications and the inclusion of a self-explanatory second-skin switch, the SDS9 toms sound much the same as they ever did — inflexible and out of date by current standards.

Part of the sales pitch behind the SDS9 is that it can "give you everything any acoustic kit has to offer, and much more besides." Hmmm. It seems remarkable to me that, having invented a new instrument, Simmons should try and beg comparison to the traditional drum instead of rising gracefully above it into the exciting age of innovation which obviously lies ahead. The synthesiser co-exists with the acoustic piano as an alternative, not as a substitute. So can the electronic drum offer new possibilities to the drummer with a regular kit without attempting to diminish the value of the most ancient and primeval of instruments.

No existing electronic drum can compete with its acoustic brother in terms of sound authenticity. Consider also the infinite variety of sounds offered by variables such as weight of stroke, choice of stick, beater, head, damping, tuning, shell construction and room acoustics, and in the case of gigging or recording the choice of microphone, its placement and EQ. To the acoustic drummer these offer an almost infinite range of sounds.

Since Simmons insist upon a comparison I have to report that the SDS9 is no exception. How much is completed invention and how much is stop gap until Simmons develop their software-based sounds, when their programmable echo can be punched in or out with the footswitch as the kit is being played or cut from one drum to another, when the dynamic range of their sounds covers a wider scale, and when all their pads offer dual- or triple-sound combinations.

In the meantime computer-based systems like the Greengate set-up offer the fiercest competition electronically if not pad-wise via their sampling, editing and waveform control, sound-looping, access by MIDI pads, wide dynamic response and sophisticated sequencing facility. Such a system's most chilling value must be that it can never become redundant — even an old disc can be recycled once its knowledge has been outmoded by new software.

Thirty-40, I'd say.

SIMMONS SDS9 electronic kit: £1600

CONTACT: Simmons Electronics, (Contact Details).