Instead of waiting until my gear has rottened in my basement, I rather prefer to place it in the limelight. Yesterday I had the opportunity in the photo atelier of a long time friend:
Photo Shooting
July 9th, 2010Howard Jones? THE Howard Jones?
July 6th, 2010When Howard Jones released his first hit single “What Is Love?” in 1983 I purchased the entire album. This initial smash hit was followed by countless more chart hits. I was told that when he used to perform he integrated several Simmons gear into his setup, for example the SDS6 step sequencer and SDSV (the emphasis is on “I was told…”).
For whatever reason Howard Jones was looking for two Simmons pads, I assume in order to integrate them into the percussion setup of his upcoming shows. One of the former Simmons protargonists forwarded my email adress and so I got his request purchasing two SDS9 pads last week. (Un-)Fortunately I don’t sell any gear from my collection. But I offered him to send two pads for free if he would return some Simmons gossip and pictures of the setup for my blog. He was very happy about my offer, but his counter-offer said that he would invite me for his Indigo2 show in London on November 6th. And I will join this show together with my wife!
Today the pads arrived in England. Howard kindly documented the arrival with a picture of him, together with none less than Rupert Hine, world famous producer, posing with my SDS9 pads. Thanks guys! Another story for my grandchildren!
Virtual SDS
June 22nd, 2010Although unexpectedly many SDSV brains and pads appeared on Ebay, I am sure that not everyone who has been desperately looking for an SDSV could get his personal instance. Anyway here is a virtual substitude:
This “unit” can be purchased at 3dstudio.com as a scalable polygon file. Probably this can be combined with a virtual SDSV sound library in the near future?
The uncertainty of Simmons value performance
June 16th, 2010During the last month I had to swallow more than once when I noticed certain Ebay prices. In most cases the auctions seemed pretty high-price to me, but sometimes also very low. For almost 7 years I have followed quite all international Simmons auctions, basically to complete my collection, but also because of personal interest. For sure the prices depend on more than the actual gear that is to be sold: When does the auction end? Pick-up only? (Inter-)national shipping? Shipping costs? The seller’s feedback? The seller’s origin country? To be honest, I am still glad that I invested my money in Simmons synthesizers rather than in stocks although not every piece of my collection has been a real bargain. I talked to an editor of a recording magazine who proved that thesis. He owns some rarities like vintage Moogs’n stuff. He told me that all of his vintage gear that he bought 10 years ago has a double value today.
Anyway I decided to start tracking all these auctions from now on to give people an idea about the actual current value of gear or it’s value development and progress. Further more it will be possible to measure the number of appearances of a certain item over the time.
I remember the period when SDSV consoles appeared in average only once a quarter year. But during the last 6 weeks I have seen 5 of them! Very strange.
I am confident that tracking these auctions will at least answer my question when it’s time to start drawing my pension.
a dignified evening of life
June 12th, 2010What’s even more fascinating than a Simmons SDSV? Exactly: A Musicaid SDSV. But these first steps of hexagonal history are so hard to find. I got an empty Musicaid SDSV frame, serial number #71, in absolute pathetic condition: rusty and filled with (vintage) British autumn leaves. I assume it has spend the last 25 years in a humid barn or basement. However no SDSV is to be scrapped. I was truely reminded of two years of my life, 1989-1991 when I had been working in a retirement home where I learned: “Everybody has a claim to a dignified evening of life”
I swear this oldie will live to see a second birth. My Musicaid pads need something to plug in. Stay tuned…
The mathematics of the hexagon
June 7th, 2010At school I was a nerd. Especially interested in mathematics and physics. Mathematics are based on theory and models. Perfect and clean: geometry, symmetry. Not as fallible as life. No wonder I had been immediately fascinated by Simmons drums: A ballanced form. The sound: calculable. No unknown quantities like acoustic drums provide. For those who want to learn more about the hexagon’s properties, I like to refer to the Wikipedia Entry about hexagons
Genesis Live At Wembley 1987
May 21st, 2010I am definetely not the biggest Genesis/Phil Collins fan. Still I cannot deny that they have regularly reached leading chart positions over the decades. Generally in order to get one of the rare Simmons video documents I got my hands on their DVD “Live At Wembley 1987”
While Phil Collins mainly uses SDSV pads and brain (apart from his Gretsch and a little SDS7 gear), Chester Thompson plays a Pearl kit which triggers an MTM plus some SDS7 pads. The MTM is connected to some Roland and EMU machines via midi. Specially within the song “The Brazilian” you get a close up view of Phil’s and Chester’s Simmons work.
This 5 people band really made a bombastic sound. Recommended…
SDSV in the "Deutsches Museum" in Munich
May 16th, 2010The “Deutsches Museum” in Munich/Germany is for sure Germany’s most important museum for technical innovations (followed by Simmonsmuseum… :-)). When I was a child, I remember several visits where I was fascinated by exhibits like aircrafts, moon vehicals, etc… . I cannot deny that recently I was pretty astonished to hear that even the SDSV made it there.
The board right in front of the SDSV says:
“In 1979, Dave Simmons invented the first drum synthesizer. Series production of this synthesiser began in 1980. This instrument was played like an acoustic drum, but offered much bigger volume and differentiation.
Thanks to its outstanding sound quality, this instrument was very high in demand. The small company rapidly grew to become the most important manufacturer of electric drums in the world.
Sounds were produced by various generators and passed through an adjustable, voltage-controlled filter. Depending on how hard the drum was hit, an amplifier controlled the output signal and intensity.
5 channel drum synthesiser
bass, snare and 3 tom modules
could be expanded to 7 modules”
The picture is taken from Wikimedia Commons
Living in a box
May 12th, 2010It’s about time for a nearly senseless post: The boxes….
Normally I keep boxes only if the cats or the kids want to keep them for playing or handicrafts. Only if the boxes say “Simmons” or “Musicaid” I don’t have the heart to give them away:
This topic even got a passage in the Complete Simmons Drum Book by Bob Henrit:
“… They had a problem too when it came to packing them for shipment. None of the work force of two or three had much idea about packing musical instruments! The first set they ever sent to Germany was delayed because they didn’t possess anything to send it. The early Simmons days were fraught with all sorts of these setbacks, but fortunately SDS3 was still selling very, very well. …”
You may look forward to the next post. It will be at least as senseless 🙂
The evolution of the SDSV pads
May 6th, 2010The idea of hexagonal shaped pads was probably the vital key why electronic drums could be established on the market and the media … until today and in the future. Particularly the mother of all subsequent Simmons pads, the SDSV pads had passed several evolution stages. What some might not know: The very first hex pads ever built, in a quantity of about 20 kits, had been made of wood. I was lucky to get one of these mammoths:
That’s what the Complete Simmons Drum Book says:
“… In the beginning these pads were cut out of two pieces of Rockboard (a very dense chipboard), and sandwiched together with a loudspeaker in between … The speakers they used as pickups proved themselves to be unreliable, so after a while were replaced by Piezo buzzers … From the embrionic stage, the pads advanced very rapidly…”
These wooden pads are the ones that you can see in the original SDSV catalogue:
Another particular feature is that Simmons used high professional pearl tom mounts made of casting metal (instead of the later one-piece plastic mounts fitting on the poor “King” stands).
The step to acrylic shells
The change to acrylic plastic shells is not documented in the drum book (or I haven’t found it so far…), but I assume that for weight and effort (=money) reasons the Rockboard variant changed to acryl. Acryl is pretty easy to form (at least into this hexagonal shape) if you have a stove which is large enough for the raw sheets (I know that because I already experimented with the original material, but I’m afraid my stove is too small). Another advantage of acryl is that it is clear and transparent. And it could be easily laquered on the inside. As far as I am told the first shells had been manufactured separately by hand. My Musicaid SDSV pads seem to prove this thesis:
The edges of the shells are not as sharp as the ones later produced at Abbey Mill, and the surface is not as smooth. But you need to come very close to see the difference.
Still they feature the loudspeakers for the trigger pulse:
There is a round tray countersunk into the wooden board to fit the speaker into it:
The Pearl tom mount seems to be adjusted with accessories provided by heating fitters 🙂 However: It works
Serial production at Abbey Mill
After all these experiments the experiences led to the final version of SDSV pads: Mark I. Although visually similar, the pads were now different in almost every detail. The only features kept from the early versions were the aluminium edging and the Polycarbonate surfaces:
Until the end of SDSV’s life cycle, the tom mounts had been made from a single piece of plastic, adjusted with 4 screws. The solder joints on the XLR socket and on the Piezo buzzer had been drowned by hot-glue to avoid the wiring falling off by vibrations while playing.
Still the SDSV pads are (from my point of view) the sexiest pads ever designed and built. I foreseeably won’t change my mind