Simmons SDS5
The hexagonal pad that changed what a drum kit could look like and what it could sound like.
Overview
An SDS5 is easy to spot on a stage. Five pads, a brain, and a silhouette that told the audience before a single note was struck that this was not a conventional kit. According to Studio Sound (March 1987, p.153), the SDS5 "burst onto the scene earlier in the decade" and changed the conversation around electronic percussion. The review goes on to note that "sampling" and other vocabulary entered the drummer's world as a direct consequence.
The pad itself made the reputation. Studio Sound (March 1987, p.153) described the pads as using "ultra-sensitive, force sensing materials" that detect "not only the dynamic but the precise point of impact of each stroke." That positional sensing is the detail collectors come back to. The SDS5 responded to how hard you hit it, and also to where. The review called this a degree of control "not previously associated" with electronic percussion. A drummer raised on acoustic heads had some adjusting to do, but earlier pad systems couldn't offer that kind of articulation.
The SDS5 was not a one-piece box. It was a modular system, a brain with pads, and the configuration was up to the player. Electronic Music Maker classified listings from the period show an SDS5 with "bass plus 4 black pads" offered together with stands, pedals and leads, which gives a sense of how a working kit was typically assembled. The same listings show SDS5 sound chips sold separately at £120, and a Simmons SDS IV listed at £120 for a two-drum, two-channel setup. Simmons clearly built a family of expandable percussion systems rather than a single fixed product.
The SDS5 reached well beyond the pop-drummer market. In an Electronic Music Maker interview, Warren Cann of Ultravox described using a Simmons SDS5 with five touch pads at an Old Vic concert, including cymbals that were flanged. The same interview places the SDS5 alongside Linn drums and microcomposers in a working rig.
Hire companies carried them, too. A period Electronic Music Maker hire listing from Xenon Hire shows the Simmons SDS9 and SDS5 offered at €25 alongside Ensoniq, Yamaha and Roland gear. That points to the SDS5 being a professional rental item rather than a curiosity.
What the SDS5 represents, in the end, is a moment when electronic percussion stopped apologizing for not being acoustic. The force-sensing pads, the positional detection, the modular brain-and-pad architecture — these were not compromises, they were a different instrument with its own logic. Players who grew up on the SDS5 tend to describe it with the same affection reserved for a first guitar, and the ones who didn't often describe it as the sound of an era they're still trying to get back to. Either way, it's a piece that matters.
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