Simmonsmuseum's Blog

Since I deal with electronic drums, I search for the perfect electronic drum set. For sure Simmons never built the perfect drum kit, especially not from today’s point of view. But what is the perfect drum kit? First of all it should be unique and full of character. This at least fits to the look of the SDSV pads, in my opinion the sexiest pads ever designed. Unfortunately the stick impact is absolutely out of the question concerning both noise and playability. And the dynamics cannot keep up with todays high tech pads made by Roland, Hart, Yamaha etc… On the other hand today’s pads look rather boring. They try to imitate real acustic drums what I think is the wrong way. So why not take the best aspects of both worlds and join them into generation of pads which look great and don’t hide that they are electronic but with great playability and dynamics? When I planned this project I already owned enough SDSV pads to built a prototype kit at a reasonable budget. In the meantime I was asked a couple of times to report about this. So here you are:

The ingredients for one drum:

• 10″ tom (foil, not lacquered). The cheapest you can get will do it. Mine cost 29 Euro
• 1 transducer (Ebay: 2 Euro)
• 6 tap boots M5 (DIY store: 2 Euro)
• 10″ Mesh head (double layer: 20 Euro)
• 1 self-adhesive felt pad (those you would use to keep the doorhandle from a wall. DIY store: 2 Euro)
• 1 6.3mm mono jack
• 1 SDSV pad

Tools:

• tuning key
• several screwdrivers
• fine saw
• drill (8mm driller)
• hammer

First I ripped all hardware and foil off the tom:

Than I cutted a 4cm ring from the top and the bottom side (as you can imagine we can convert two pads from only one tom). To estimate the right thickness I layed the drum head and rim onto the drum for line-marking.

Than we can go on dismantling the SDSV pad and place the tap boots, transducer and the jack:

Now it’s time to assemble the pad again:

Then I simply put the ring on the riot shield and fill it with rubber foam. I sticked the felt on the transducer in order to protect it against
direct hits and to dampen the trigger pulses. The transducer does not need to be fixed. This is simply done by the pressure of rubber foam, felt and mesh head

Last but not least I mounted the head and “tuned” the drum. That’s it

And the entire kit:

The dynamics are really great although the components did not cost much more than 30 Euro per pad. Of course this project can be realized with any wooden subsurface. So what about converting your desktop into a mesh pad?

And that’s the kit in action:

The sounds are from Toontrack Superior 2. Pretty close to perfect….

Have you ever looked inside a common HiHat controller? The technology inside is just as simple as expected: If you step onto the pedal, a curcuit is being closed and the inner resistance is immediately set from infinite to zero. So the drum brain only needs to messure the remaining current in order to decide whether an open or closed HiHat sound is supposed to be played back. Modern controllers which can even map half open states probaly provide a variable conductance between open and closed, more or less linearly depending on the angle of the plate. And Simmons? Please correct me, but I suppose the SDSV HiHat pedal was the first of its kind. So it should be justified that Dave Simmons is the inventor of it. But it was differnt. It was based on a light barrier. The source of light was permanently powerd by the brain (15V). When the pedal was closed, a metal tongue interrupted the beam of light, the sellenium cell opposite to the source could not send anymore current to the brain which triggered the “decay killer” (this expression comes from the SDS3).

By the way: Always keep in mind that if you connect a HiHat controller other than the original to an SDSV brain: You might damage your pedal!

But Dave Simmons not only invented the open/close Hihat pedal. One of the trailblazing innovations of the SDX was that the first time an electronic HiHat provided more than open/closed/closing but also half open. This was realized by pessure. The pedal had the same FSR foil built in as the pads did have. Depending on how strong you kicked the pedal down the inner resistance could be modulated.

A couple of posts ago I reported about polish copies of Mark III pads. This time I “found” a pair of russian copies made by a company called LELL:

The playing surface is very much like Mark III type

The surface of the backside has an imitation leather stamping

the tom mount is not Pearl compatible but is similar to the first generation of Dynacord Percuter Pads. The connection is a midi socket

It’s funny to imagine how Simmons fought against those copies coming from western countries while beyond the iron fence the eastern countries unobservedly copied everything. But as I know from my Simmons buddy from eastern Germany: During the cold war a Simmons was a Simmons and everything else was a copy.