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Old Technology Meets New

Started by sandman, February 20, 2013, 10:52:51 PM

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sandman

Since not much is going around here, figured I would add some drum porn and show off my E-Drum kit. I decided to marry old technology with new on my set-up. I was a teenager when Simmons E-Drums took the world by storm and always regretted selling my Simmons SDS7 back in the 80's. I began scouring Ebay last year looking for some red Simmons SDS9 Pads since they are still my favorite pad to play even over current pads on the market. They just feel better to me, call me old fashioned. I ended up with well over 24 red Simmons SDS9 Pads which I restored to mint condition one by one. I converted all my tom pads to dual zone triggers by adding a Stereo TRS Jack and an extra Piezo just like they did on the original Simmons Snare Drums. I can now take full advantage of rim sounds on each tom pad.

For my trigger cymbals, I decided to make my own version of the Pintech Visu-Lite Series Acrylic Trigger Cymbals. I bought a few sheets of 1/4" thick acrylic off Ebay, cut them to various sizes, heated up the acrylic, placed on a real cymbal to mold to shape real cymbal, and used Vacuum Forming process to form my own acrylic cymbals. I bought edge molding from Mcmaster Carr for my strike zone. I was actually able to buy the dual zone chokeable and  three zone ride wiring direct from Pintech. The results came out perfect. I built two 16" Dual Zone  Chokeable Crash Cymbals, one 14" Single Zone Splash, and one 3 Zone 18" ride cymbal that gives me Bell, Bow, and edge sounds. Still stuck with acoustic hi-hats since Manfred is not taking any orders right now for his hi-hat circuit board. Anyway, Here's pix of my Simmons SDS9 powered my 2Box Drumit Five module. It works perfectly with the Simmons Pads so I have zero complaints except for the hi-hat limitation.














Murgen

 Thank you so much for posting. What a job and what a great results. I take a deep bow!  :D
--------
2Box Drumit 5 Mk2 since 2012

digitalDrummer

How does it respond? The Simmons triggers were not know for easy and dynamic triggering in their day.

sandman

#3
Thanks for the kind words. (Takes Bow) :rock:

The Simmons SDS9 Pads trigger perfectly plus I have tried SDS7 and SDS8 series pads too. The only thing I had to do was tweak some of the settings under the Unit menu, adjust Sensitivity, and they trigger as good as anything out on the market now in my personal opinion.

I have owned lots of E-Kits in my 38 years of drumming, from the Yamaha DTX 2.0, Yamaha DTXreme IIS, DTXTreme III, Ddrum 4.0SE, Simmons SDS7 to the  Simmons SDS9, and Simmons SDS1000 and I still think Dave Simmons was way ahead of his time in pad design compared to what's out currently. If you look at current trigger pad designs, they are all merely cosmetically different but function exactly the same with a simple head piezo and rim piezo. Not much has really changed since 1981 except for the sound engines(modules, brains, whatever you like to call them). I prefer the SDS9 pads because they just feel right to me. I don't have to adjust or change my approach or technique when switching from acoustic to electronic drums.  When you tweak the module settings just right, the pads are very dynamic and responsive offering a nice range of low to hard strikes. Positional sensing would be the only thing I wished I could incorporate into my current kit but with every choice, there is a trade-off. Love the 2Box module too. I have over 16gigs of samples and really enjoy the open sound source system. They blow Roland and Yamaha away in my opinion.

tower of p

You own one great looking kit! Makes me wanna build my own first diy kit (ok, let´s get started with a pad...).


I´d really like to see and hear it being played. Maybe you plan making a youtube-video one day?

cheers,
Lutz

fulrmr

Very cool. Love the Visu-Lite Clones. ;) Can you tell me how much the triggers/chokes from Pintech cost you?