Simmons SDS1000 (1986)
A rack-mounted brain with four sampled snares, which swapped the famous Simmons "sheep kicked in the gut" sound for a lot of common sense.
Overview
The SDS1000 arrived in 1986 as a stripped-down SDS9 rather than a warmed-over SDS8. Studio Sound (October 1986, p.36) reported that Simmons launched a batch of new electronic percussion products around this period, including MIDI-compatible units such as the MTM interface and DSM Dual Sample Module. Simmons' own E&MM reviewer noted the kit was positioned to replace the SDS800, but that the 1000 is properly the SDS8's successor. In practice that meant a five-piece electronic kit - bass drum, snare, and three toms - built around a control unit the manual insists on calling a "brain." It sits in a 1U-high, 19-inch rack-mountable chassis with every control on the front panel. That rack format was a real departure for Simmons. Apart from the SDS7, earlier kit electronics had lived in flat boxes with controls on top. Racking the brain meant you could park it next to your effects units and still reach the knobs from behind the kit.
The sound engine borrowed heavily from the SDS9 and split the work three ways. The bass drum is digitally synthesised via software programming inside the control unit, with only Pitch and Click Level to shape it. The reviewer found it hard to move far from the basic solid, workmanlike punch unless you stripped the click entirely and landed on something closer to a 1969-era recording. The snare is the interesting one. It uses four basic samples of real drums encoded onto a chip, named Tight Snare, Rock Snare, Huge Ambient Snare and Electric Snare, then fed through Pitch, Bend and Decay controls for a genuinely wide spread of sounds. The toms stay analogue, which is why they carry the most recognisably "Simmons" character of the three voice types. The reviewer recommended keeping an eye on the decay control to coax something more natural out of them.
Programming is deliberately simple. All five drums are variable, and your work stores into five user memory locations alongside five permanently stored factory preset kits - ten combinations total. You step through them with a front-panel Select button or an optional footswitch. The LED readout shows preset numbers 1-5 and user programs 1-5 distinguished by a small dot suffix. The left-hand side of the front panel handles levels: the first five knobs set pad trigger sensitivity, the next five set individual output levels, and the final two control the grouped outputs. Each channel keeps its own separate output, with grouped stereo and grouped mono options and a headphone socket besides. The E&MM reviewer was blunt that restricting audio outs to a simple pair of jacks is a cost-cutting exercise that has ruined a number of otherwise excellent drum machine designs.
The pads are standard Simmons issue - the result, according to the company, of a £100,000 development involving floating heads, a special rubber covering and piston-loading. Interconnection to the brain is five jack-to-jacks into sockets on the rear panel. Because the SDS1000 carries no rim sound on the kit, the snare pad has no rim trigger (unlike the SDS9). That at least makes every pad except the bass interchangeable, which is handy for rotating the snare's inevitable punishment across the four candidates. The kit ships without stands. You either take Simmons' own (read Pearl's) individual stands or use the standard mounting brackets with stands of your choice. The Black Rack pictured in period coverage looks every bit as menacing as its name.
The most contentious omission is MIDI. The SDS1000 has no five-pin DIN sockets, and the E&MM reviewer admitted to grave reservations about an electronic instrument without them. Simmons pre-empted the criticism with the parallel TMI, a pad-trigger-to-MIDI interface addable later, and the SDE expander for extending the onboard programming limitations down the line. The argument, as the reviewer framed it, was to tell newcomers to electronic percussion to concentrate on learning what they've got before worrying about MIDI. The kit's real strength, in that same review, was playability - an improvement on the SDS9 thanks to better dynamics - and a confident simplicity that enticed rather than stunned. The verdict was pointed: the Simmons Sound is dead, long live the Simmons Sound. The original distinctive tone beloved of American TV cop-show composers had been consigned by Simmons themselves to a cupboard marked "good ideas at the time," and the SDS1000 was the new breed.
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