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Simmons SDS9

Drumcheck

Article from International Musician & Recording World, July 1985

Could this be the ultimate electronic kit? Bob Henrit thinks so


Snare rim triggers an alternative ROM


There I was, confidently expecting Simmons to release some sort of non-percussion instrument and they fooled me. The SDS9 and 800 series sets really caught me with my pants down.

You presumably know by now that the Simmons company launched this new equipment in April, but I am, to all intents and purposes, the first reviewer to play with the up market SDS 9. There's a definite philosophy behind this particular set which wasn't in evidence for any of the other Simmons sets. SDS 9 is meant to sound like acoustic drums, play like them with all their nuances, and of course feel like them. This would not appear to be as simple a brief as it sounds; the relevant problems have not been solved overnight. The sounds of real drums have evidently been analysed to the Nth degree, the info fed into a computer and the results scrutinised. From this data SDS 9 has evolved to be a set which doesn't have just digital or analogue voices, but a mixture of the two. (The toms are analogue, the snare and rim digitally sampled, with the bass drum computer generated). Obviously we'll discuss more of these features later.

Pads



Simmons now have a brand-new pad which cost a hundred grand to research and develop and which is now used for all their sets. It resembles the one produced for SDS 7 cosmetically, but is otherwise completely different. It's made from car bumper-type abs and sort of resembles a bowl with a 3/16" wall. The design has webs inside to strengthen it and a totally different way of mounting the 'head'. Up until now the Simmons pads have had a piece of wood fixed below the rim of the bowl and a sheet of rubber, or riot-shielded plastic, laid on top and secured. These Mark Three pads though are air-floating. A piece of rubber sheeting is fixed across the top of the hexagonal bowl and a piece of fibre-board is stuck underneath. This board is also hex shaped and slightly smaller than the mouth of the bowl, so works very like a membrane stretched over a tube just like a real drum. It also feels very approximate to an acoustic drum. There's a rim formed here too which is also made from some sort of plastic and is very playable. More of this later too.

As before, the Simmons pad is meant to be mounted on a Pearl-style double stand so there's a keyway formed into the specially strengthened side. Inside the pad is a completely new spring steel clamp which is designed to mate with the tom holder tube, and is adjustable via a drum key operated screw which is actually set into the top of the pad and much more accessible than before. Inside the pad are fitted the usual Piezo transducers. I use the plural here because the snare drum has two. One is fitted, as per usual, almost dead centre and under the 'head'; the other is much closer to the rim and meant to pick up the vibrations from it. This means we can play stick-across-the-rim style without having to lay the stick over the head in the usual awkward manner. (With the SDS 9 it's only necessary to strike the rim anywhere to achieve that sound.) Since the set has a rim and a snare drum sound it is therefore possible to get a traditional 'rim shot' sound by hitting the head and the rim simultaneously. This, of course, gives a much stronger, more accented sound and is useful for 'changing gear' through an arrangement. As before, Simmons use that gel inside their pads which is slightly glutinous when it sets and serves to shock-mount the wires where they join to the transducer and the socket. These sockets, by the way, are jack-type for all the new sets but still XLRs for the SDS7.

The bass drum pad looks, and more or less is, much the same as before. However, it has a couple of refinements which make it much better. It measures almost four inches deep and still has the old plywood inside; this time though it's slightly thicker and has a square cut out of the centre. This square has been shaved and then replaced with a rubber gasket behind to spring the place where the beater strikes. (For some reason I felt the moveable centre would have been more efficient had it been circular. I also felt that the rubber there might wear more quickly with the heavy movement of the bass drum beater). The bass drum pad has exactly the same sort of spurs as before and these locate into keyway holes cut into a piece of plasticised metal which is attached to the outside of the shell. Inside is a new plastic open-jawed clamp to grab the tubular spurs; it's screwed to the wood inside the pad and won't turn like SDS 5's used to. The bass pedal fits to the pad via an 'L' shaped piece of ¼" steel which is something like 3" wide to accommodate every pedal known to civilised man.

Something very interesting about the new pads is that with their method of construction they don't inherently sound anything like the old ones. Their unamplified sound is a good deal lower pitched than before and less cutting and annoying. (Anyone who has ever overdubbed Simmons drums in the control room will be aware that sometimes the sound of the stick hitting the pad will overpower their sound. A lot of this problem was due to the acoustic sound of the pad and this new pad, with its deeper tone, should help to eradicate that niggling problem).

An absolute wealth of features


Brain



SDS 9's brain would appear to be in exactly the same box as SDS 8's, but the similarity ends there. For a start you have different controls for each voice. All the other Simmons sets have had more or less undedicated voices with the same parameters to change them. Indeed these original sound-change-designations have become the 'sine qua non' for the whole electronic drum world. So, it's not necessary to have filter sweep on a bass drum nor pitch bend therefore they don't give you controls for these parameters. Of course this isn't the whole story, and Simmons have worked on the sounds electronically so that different things happen when a common control is adjusted depending on the voice in question.

As I said we have three tom voices which are analogue sounds, three digitally sampled snare drum oriented sounds and one software generated bass drum voice. The three toms shouldn't really need any explaining; they're synthesized and have six degrees of parameter control. Filter pitch, Filter sweep, Tone pitch, Pitch bend, Decay length, Noise/Tone balance and Click level.

The snare drum sounds are digitally sampled in the usual Simmons way and stored in removeable chips. These chips are located in a little box on the right side of the brain and should you wish to change the samples the company will supply you with a replacement set for just under £75. SDS 9 comes with a very dry snare sample, a cross stick sample and a snare-drum-without-snares-on, which of course sounds like a timbale. We have several different sound regulation controls for these voices too: Filter Pitch, Filter Sweep, Snare Prom Pitch, Snare Pitch Bend, Snare Decay Length, Snare/Rim Balance, and Filter Resonance. The rim itself has its own range of controls of which Prom Pitch, Pitch Bend and Decay are the same as the snare's, but it also has Prom Select and Noise Level.

A replacement set of snare sounds is available for an additional £75


The bass drum's sound is generated in a slightly different way. Simmons analysed a bass drum and programmed its sound into the microcomputer inside SDS 9 in two parts: click and thump. Now, every time you hit the bass drum the computer recreates that sound. This allows more control and five parameters are adjustable. We can alter the pitch of the click, the thump and also the length of both those sounds, and we can control the level of the click relative to the thump. Simmons have worked hard to make it still produce thump at low level. (This is actually contrary to what happens with a real bass drum. The acoustic instrument also produces click at low level and very little real resonance. Simmons, though, have changed all that and made the instrument more adaptable.) By working with the attack, decay and sensitivity curves, they've managed to make the snare drum much more playable too, and genuine 'grace notes' are now possible together with a very gentle progression through the dynamics. There don't appear to be any of those unreal volume peaks between the strokes which were prevalent before. That, more or less, sums up the actual voices of the SDS 9, and we'll come on to how they sound a little later.

As I said, the set has a lot of facilities which have not been available before, all of which are extremely useful. For example the machine will trigger itself in four different modes to allow you to work on your sound. So, we select mode one and the voices of the selected channel will sound in sequence: bass, snare, rim, tom one, tom two and tom three. They'll cycle round and a speed control will allow you to slow them down to really hear how they sound together. Now, if you decide you only wish to work on a single voice (say the snare), simply select mode two. The voice in question will then sound in perpetuity until you've changed its parameters and are satisfied. There are two further modes which are to do with the snare cycling through pad, cross stick and rimshot and the other through the three toms. It's also possible to make the trigger unit run through the sounds with varying dynamics should you wish to see what difference a softer touch or accent will make. Dealers will be pleased to know it even features a self-demo facility activated via a secret code. Most of these functions are taken care of by a bunch of press buttons situated on the left side of the unit. These may also be set up to allow a voice to be assigned to each should you (say) wish to overdub without the pads in the control room. (The SDS 9 is without a doubt exceedingly 'studio friendly'. It even boasts a headphone socket which is a big first for Simmons and I feel a must, not just for silent practise, but also to enable sounds to be set in the control room whilst the rest of the musicians get on with pressing their own buttons.)

Since I'm on the subject of those seven buttons over on the side perhaps I should mention what else they'll do. They're set in a vertical line and all have at least three functions which are switchable via the mode button. These functions are mainly to do with Play, Programme and MIDI. In Play they'll verify, dump and load memory (to and from tape), as well as activate button 'tap'. In Programme they will select, save and store voices as well as controlling echo, auto trigger, second skin and tom copying facility. The third row is for MIDI select, Transmit and Receive as well as two other pertinent yes and no features. The very bottom button is kit select. SDS 9 has a total of 40 foot-pad-switchable voices of which 20 are factory set and the rest you can make up yourself. This can be accomplished either by starting from scratch or more ideally by copying one of the factory sounds and adapting it. More of this later. These kit voices are selected by pressing a button and four banks, A, B, C and D, have five sets each. You may only use the foot-pad to change through the kits in a single bank but if you set your options up in a useful order it shouldn't prove to be a problem. (The selector flashes from kits one through five and then back to the start and this info is clearly visible through a window which will also display other important programme data. It will also tell us when it's storing by flashing through those letters and tell us No if we try to record over a factory pre-set sound.)

I have a couple more things to say about the toms which have had a lot of thought put into them. One of the time wasting and frustrating chores of tom tuning (be it for acoustic or electronic drums) has been in making all three drums sound in exactly the same way relative to attack, decay and the other important control parameters. The 9, however, has done away with all this. One simply sets up tom one to a nicety and copies it over to the other drums with a pitch change. It's simplicity itself and will really come into its own in the studio. The other tom feature is the second skin effect. With a press of a button the drums (or rather the toms) become double headed. The second skin works in just the same way as on an acoustic drum and rounds out the sound. It's accomplished by modulating the frequency of the sound source; thus you're adding harmonics to the original and modulating them by a fixed unrelated frequency. This produces very drummy sounds. Unfortunately, we aren't able to hear the 'bottom' head on its own but this is hardly necessary since once we alter any of the parameters of the tom itself, head two will automatically follow suit. There's no doubt that any double headed drum (electronic or not) has a much more pleasant, albeit a little more problematic to record, sound than a single headed one.

Beside all this, Simmons have also incorporated programmable echos into their product. One is a simple but effective 'Elvis P style' slapback, a single repeat whose time base may be shortened or lengthened to taste. The other is your actual multi-repeat which may also have its time base adjusted. What you are actually doing is re-triggering at a changeable level, thus you can change the number of repetitions too. It's a really great feature to play with, and since only the final beat is echoed you never get into a cacophonic mess. (Also, since you're actually placing the original beats you never get out of time; the machine mimicing only what you play). These echos are programmable and will work on a whole kit number. It's then up to us to say which drums we don't wish to be affected. (It's very effective to have echo on the rim alone.)

Obviously sensitivity is as important with this set as it's been with the other Simmons products. There's a sensitivity control and a tell tale light to show when just the right amount has been dialled. Of course we have a touch sensitive set here with far more usable dynamic response than before since the curves have been adjusted. One manifestation of this feature is that now when we hit the snare rim and pad together both of those voices will be accented.

£100,000 invested in the development of the pads


Sounds



All the sounds have been tailored for an amplifier to simulate those of the real drums. I feel actually that it would be more accurate to say that really SDS 9 simulates the way we would like our acoustic sets to sound. As far as the presets are concerned they are set up in a way where the toms will not change in each bank but the other voices will. In the next bank the toms will change to (say) double headed with the other voices constant. There are not going to be any outrageous noises programmed into the computer, only unusual ones. It's meant to be 'drummy'.

Whilst we're on the subject I tested the set through a Carlsbro keyboard combo and through a largish PA. It sounded fine through either system. (Several manufacturers are working on medium sized amplification for electronic drums and I wouldn't expect Simmons to be left behind in the field. Time alone will tell, though.)

The chips which I touched on earlier which contain the snare sounds can be changed, but real care has to be exercised when carrying out the manoeuvre. Simmons would prefer you to fit a set of Zifs (Zero Insertion Force Socket) which you can fit to the existing PROM sockets. Zifs have a lever to lock the chip in place and removal is not so potentially dangerous. (The legs of the prom can very easily be bent even with careful insertion.) There's a switch inside the prom hatch to select playback of eight or 16k byte EPROMS. (The larger ones are far more complex and longer sounds).

Ins and outs



SDS 9's back edge has the usual row of jack sockets. They're very important and are, reading from stage left: power, stereo output, mix output, five voices in, five voices out, sequencer in, MIDI out, MIDI in/tape dump and load, and foot select switch in. We haven't discussed the MIDI features of SDS 9 so now we will.

It has a built in MIDI interface which is assignable for note values and voice changes. Since we have 40 different 'kits' stored in the memory with six voices, then it would be possibly to play 240 different notes on a MIDI equipped keyboard and every time we stamped on the selector pedal we'd move to six different notes and sounds. All you need to do is strike the pads and, if it's a dynamic synthesizer on the other end of the MIDI lead, it will get louder as you do. (It will also work in reverse, allowing you to play drum sounds from your MIDI equipped keyboard). Needless to say, SDS9 will also mate with realtime MIDI recorders or sequencers to record your every hit. It appears that not all MIDI systems are capable of working fast enough to accurately reproduce the timing of the beats of a fast roll. The Simmons is.

All in all the MIDI capability of this not-at-all-expensive drum set is extremely good. It seems almost superfluous for me to say I'm sure it will be hugely successful. So that we don't make complete fools of ourselves and insert the snare pad (with its twin pickups) into the wrong module, Simmons have made things easier for us by making its playing surface a different colour. It's grey and a stereo lead is necessary to connect it to the brain. A pair of tripod-based, single braced, Pearl, double tom stands are supplied for your money as well as the necessary cables and footpad to make it work. The usual five self colours are available from Simmons, including black.

In conclusion



I've strived to find something to knock about SDS 9 so that I didn't appear to be eulogising the Simmons product as usual. However, I've failed miserably. All my former criticisms would appear to be taken care of, and all the features I felt were missing have now been incorporated. I have total access to an SDS 7 and an SDS 8 and am saving up like crazy for the 9. (I've even cut out going to the pub at lunch time and the Rolls will have to wait for a psychedelic paint-job till I've got it.) So the solid-bodied drum set moves on yet again. Will the opposition ever catch up with Dave Simmons? Tune in next year to the continuing sage...

P.S. I'm sure I must have missed out something or other about the SDS9. But good God, what d'you expect for £1.50. If I gave you any more info you'd be able to build your own bloody electronic drum set.

SIMMONS SDS 9 - RRP: £1190


Also featuring gear in this article


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Previous Article in this issue

Green Machines

Next article in this issue

Yamaha Clavinova


Publisher: International Musician & Recording World - Cover Publications Ltd, Northern & Shell Ltd.

The current copyright owner/s of this content may differ from the originally published copyright notice.
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International Musician - Jul 1985

Gear in this article:

Drums (Electronic) > Simmons > SDS9

Review by Bob Henrit

Previous article in this issue:

> Green Machines

Next article in this issue:

> Yamaha Clavinova


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