Drum Machines Have No Soul

Electronic drum kit

Simmons SDS7

The SDS7 did not ask a drummer to surrender to an automatic accompaniment box.

The digital drum boom →
Simmons SDS7 pad kit and digital–analogue control unit in period review photography.April 1984 · Electronics & Music Maker / mu:zinesSource & credit ↗

At Frankfurt in April 1984, Simmons showed the SDS7 as the electronic kit grown to stage scale: a rack of voices, hexagonal pads and enough memory to make a drummer’s setup feel newly programmable. Within months, the literature was already catching a system in motion—manual amendments, dealer advertising and the first international campaign all trace the instrument’s move from trade-show promise to working professional kit.

Sources (6)
  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗
  3. Open source 3 ↗
  4. Open source 4 ↗
  5. Open source 5 ↗
  6. Open source 6 ↗

Source-led exhibition chapter

Simmons SDS7 — a drum kit with a memory of the drummer

APRIL 1984 / PERIOD REVIEWPADS · RACK · MEMORY

A silent, document-led exhibition: no hardware reconstruction, simulated audio, or unbounded track claim.

The SDS7 arrives as a kit before it arrives as a circuit. Hexagonal pads sit where hands and sticks expect drums; below them, a long rack holds the voices. The drummer still strikes, listens and chooses. What Simmons moved into the rack was a way of remembering those choices.

Sources (2)
  1. The New Simmons Kits ↗
  2. Simmons SDS7 ↗

Frankfurt, then the workshop

Simmons showed the SDS7 at the Frankfurt music fair in 1984, alongside the smaller SDS8. Ultravox drummer Warren Cann saw a prototype there before visiting the new St Albans premises; Andy Duncan also found a system still being adjusted at the factory. Those reports are close to introduction, but they do not establish a universal first-sale date or a settled production specification.

Sources (2)
  1. The New Simmons Kits ↗
  2. Simmons SDS7 ↗

The SDS8 offered a fixed five-channel analogue path. The SDS7 was modular: a rack could hold up to twelve voice modules, combining analogue sources, digitally stored drum material and noise. Period accounts describe pitch, filter, decay, attack and source balance as decisions available to the player. A new snare was something assembled from those elements, not simply a preset to find.

Sources (2)
  1. The New Simmons Kits ↗
  2. Simmons SDS7 ↗

The pad still matters

Both early reviewers noticed a changed playing surface from the harder SDS5 pads. Cann also described revised connectors and mounting hardware; Duncan thought the softer pads made the system more playable while stopping short of treating it as identical to an acoustic kit. The photographs therefore do useful evidence work: pad, rack, then the controls that asked the player to change a voice. A website cannot reproduce a pad’s resistance, and should not claim to.

Sources (2)
  1. The New Simmons Kits ↗
  2. Simmons SDS7 ↗

Contemporary descriptions also speak of roughly one hundred stored kits and a sixteen-segment selector for recalling favourites. Duncan described combining voices from stored kits and saving the result; the manual is a corroborating document for the control system. The exact memory wording is not perfectly uniform in period testimony, so the exhibition keeps this as a set-list idea rather than an invented interactive specification.

Sources (2)
  1. Simmons SDS7 ↗
  2. Simmons SDS 7 Drum System Operating Instructions ↗

Silent explanatory path

Pad → trigger → rack voice → recalled kit.

This reading diagram follows the period accounts of a played pad and a modular rack: analogue source, digitally stored drum material and noise could be balanced into a saved kit. It does not simulate the SDS7, set a knob position, claim a fixed memory count, or play audio.

The kit in other people’s hands

Bill Bruford said in early 1985 that he used vertically racked SDS7 pads on King Crimson’s tours of Japan and America, and used eight of its stored kits. The interview is a touring account, not an allocation of the SDS7 to named songs, recordings or exact settings.

Source (1)
  1. Bill Bruford ↗

Howard Jones described an SDS7 driven by an SDS6 sequencer alongside two Drumulators while discussing Dream Into Action. His account places the SDS7 in the working setup, but it does not identify a particular track or programmed sound. Neil Peart later described loading EPROMs of found and made sounds for Power Windows, including coin sounds at the opening of “The Big Money.” That is a named, bounded path—not evidence that every drum sound on the album came from the SDS7.

Sources (2)
  1. Synthpiana Jones ↗
  2. Mean Mean Stride: The Drums of Neil Peart ↗

An instrument still being finished

A dated May 1984 amendment in the operating instructions records a change in output-pin wiring across serial ranges. A New Zealand distributor advertisement and a later Simmons range advertisement place the instrument in territory-specific marketing and the maker’s evolving catalogue. They make a small paper trail, not a definitive revision history or worldwide launch timetable.

Sources (3)
  1. Simmons SDS 7 Drum System Operating Instructions ↗
  2. Simmons SDS7 distributor advertisement ↗
  3. Simmons range advertisement ↗

The SDS7 did not make the drummer disappear. It made a drummer’s decisions storable: a stick met a pad, and the rack could recall a built voice or carry newly prepared material. Bruford’s tour layout, Jones’s sequenced setup and Peart’s EPROM-triggered sounds are three differently bounded accounts of that possibility.

Sources (5)
  1. The New Simmons Kits ↗
  2. Simmons SDS7 ↗
  3. Bill Bruford ↗
  4. Synthpiana Jones ↗
  5. Mean Mean Stride: The Drums of Neil Peart ↗

The complete original dossier, source register, visual archive, recording evidence and related routes remain below.

The machine in the record

Neil Peart playing at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre in 2010, photographed by Clalansingh.
Neil Peart playing Toronto’s Air Canada Centre in July 2010, photographed by Clalansingh. It identifies Peart in the Power Windows Simmons SDS7 story; it is not a photograph of the 1985 sessions or the machine.
Cover artwork for Rush — Power Windows (Remastered).
Record artwork for Rush — Power Windows (Remastered); it identifies the release, not the machine or a recording session.

Rush / Power Windows.

Neil Peart loaded EPROM chips of found sound into the SDS-7 for Power Windows; on “The Big Money”, even clinking 50-pence coins entered the drum world. The rack becomes a kit that can carry noises no ordinary kit could hold.

Read Mean Mean Stride: The Drums of Neil Peart ↗

More records in the archive

The machine keeps turning up.

Howard Jones beside a clearly marked Simmons SDS7 brain and sequencer equipment in One Two Testing, March 1985.
Howard Jones beside a clearly marked Simmons SDS7 brain and sequencer equipment in One Two Testing, March 1985. It is an exact-model period photograph; it does not assign the machine to a particular Dream Into Action track.
Cover artwork for Howard Jones — Dream Into Action (2010 Remastered Edition).
Record artwork for Howard Jones — Dream Into Action (2010 Remastered Edition); it identifies the release, not the machine or a recording session.

Howard Jones / Dream Into Action

Howard Jones describes using an SDS7 driven by an SDS6 sequencer while building Dream Into Action, alongside two Drumulators.

Read Synthpiana Jones ↗

Reported association

Roger Taylor / Queen / The Works Tour and The Cross performances

Roger Taylor used a Simmons SDS7 during the 1984–85 Works Tour, carrying the hex-pad sound from Queen’s stage world into his solo work and later performances with The Cross.

Read Simmons SDS 7 artist-use record ↗

Neil Peart / Rush / Rush studio work around 1987

Peart describes Rush’s existing Simmons SDS5 and SDS7 systems when explaining the addition of SDS9 modules in the studio.

Read A Real Job by Neil Peart ↗
Cover artwork for Gonzalo Martinez — gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes.
Gonzalo Martinez — gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes: retained release artwork gives the documented machine story a record-world context; it does not depict the hardware, a session, or an individual track allocation.

Gonzalo Martinez / gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes

Gonzalo Martinez lists a Simmons SDS7 among the equipment used for gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes.

Read gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes ↗
Cover artwork for Munch — Tree.
Munch — Tree: retained release artwork gives the documented machine story a record-world context; it does not depict the hardware, a session, or an individual track allocation.

Munch / Tree

The reissue’s original studio-equipment inventory names a Simmons SDS7 used in Munch’s 1986–91 recordings.

Read Munch — Tree ↗
One Two Testing’s 1985 Bill Bruford interview page on the Simmons SDS7.
One Two Testing’s 1985 Bill Bruford interview page, preserved by mu:zines. It is the contemporary source for his account of vertically racked SDS7 pads on King Crimson tours; the page does not show the machine.

Bill Bruford / King Crimson / 1984–85 King Crimson touring setup

Bruford says he used vertically racked SDS7 pads on King Crimson tours of Japan and America, calling the new machine playable and using eight of its 99 kits.

Read Bill Bruford ↗

Neil Peart / Rush / Power Windows; “The Big Money”

Peart says EPROM samples were loaded into an analog-digital hybrid Simmons SDS-7 module for Power Windows, including found sounds used on “The Big Money”.

Read Mean Mean Stride: The Drums of Neil Peart ↗
01 // Modular analogue/digital electronic kit

A drum kit rebuilt around the player

The SDS7 did not ask a drummer to surrender to an automatic accompaniment box. It put the instrument back under the sticks: trigger pads at the front, a rack of analogue, digital and noise voices behind them, and the SDS6 available as its sequencing partner. Reviews of the new kit stressed the physical scale of the system as much as its circuitry. This was electronic percussion designed to be performed, not merely switched on.

Sources (2)
  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗

02 // Modular analogue/digital electronic kit

Memory made the kit personal

A 16-segment selector and recallable kit memories gave the SDS7 a different kind of continuity. Settings could travel to cartridges, so the sound of a particular setup could survive the journey between rehearsal room, studio and stage. That mattered because the instrument was sold as a set of choices: pads, modules and voices could be assembled into an electronic kit with a player’s own habits already built in.

Sources (2)
  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗

03 // Modular analogue/digital electronic kit

The price of a new drum future

Contemporary reviews placed SDS7 packages at roughly £1,850 to £1,875 before VAT. That price put it in professional territory: a serious capital purchase for a drummer, a touring act or a studio looking for an electronic centrepiece rather than a small effect. The rack, the pads and the memory were the visible argument for the expense.

Sources (2)
  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗

04 // Modular analogue/digital electronic kit

A platform that kept changing

A May 1984 amendment to the operating instructions records a revision to output-pin wiring and describes twelve channel slots of module defaults. The EPROM Blower then opened a route to more memory. Read together, those documents make the SDS7 feel less like a sealed product than a developing platform: the makers were refining it while players were learning how far an electronic kit could be pushed.

Sources (3)
  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗
  3. Open source 3 ↗

05 // Modular analogue/digital electronic kit

From Frankfurt to the world

By September 1984, a New Zealand advertisement named Live Sound Ltd as distributor and listed dealers from Auckland to Invercargill. Its language—“digital/analog drums” and computer memory for hundreds of programmed sounds—turned the technical proposition into a sales pitch for an export-ready electronic kit. A later Simmons range advertisement kept the SDS7 visible alongside the SDS9, proof that the big rack remained central to the company’s image.

Sources (2)
  1. Open source 1 ↗
  2. Open source 2 ↗

MUSIC HISTORY

On record

  • Neil Peart / Rush — Power Windows; “The Big Money”. Peart says EPROM samples were loaded into an analog-digital hybrid Simmons SDS-7 module for Power Windows, including found sounds used on “The Big Money”. Source ↗
  • Howard Jones — Dream Into Action. Howard Jones describes using an SDS7 driven by an SDS6 sequencer while building Dream Into Action, alongside two Drumulators. Source ↗
  • Roger Taylor / Queen — The Works Tour and The Cross performances. Roger Taylor used a Simmons SDS7 during the 1984–85 Works Tour, carrying the hex-pad sound from Queen’s stage world into his solo work and later performances with The Cross. Source ↗
  • Gonzalo Martinez — gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes. Gonzalo Martinez lists a Simmons SDS7 among the equipment used for gonzalo martinez y sus congas pensantes. Source ↗
  • Munch — Tree. The reissue’s original studio-equipment inventory names a Simmons SDS7 used in Munch’s 1986–91 recordings. Source ↗

In the studio and on stage

  • Neil Peart / Rush — Rush studio work around 1987; individual recording not named. Peart describes Rush’s existing Simmons SDS5 and SDS7 systems when explaining the addition of SDS9 modules in the studio. Source ↗

Sources

  1. The New Simmons Kits
  2. Simmons SDS7
  3. Simmons SDS 7 Drum System Operating Instructions
  4. Simmons SDS7 distributor advertisement
  5. Simmons range advertisement
  6. Simmons Electronic Drums Virtual Museum — manuals index
  7. Simmons SDS EPB Operating Instructions
  8. Bill Bruford
  9. Synthpiana Jones
  10. Mean Mean Stride: The Drums of Neil Peart

The visual archive

Further visual evidence.

These displayed records are labelled by their documented role, date and source; source-only records are listed separately below.

Simmons electronic kit in SDS7 review contextApril 1984 · One Two TestingSource & credit ↗
Simmons SDS7 and SDS9 range advertisementMay 1986 · Simmons / Sound On SoundSource & credit ↗
SDS7 rack and pad systemApr 1984 · One Two TestingKit-and-brain photograph with SIMMONS SDS7 marking legible.Source & credit ↗
SDS7 rack and hexagonal-pad kitJun 1985 · One Two TestingSimmons SDS7 rack and hexagonal-pad kit with SDS7 model marking visible.Source & credit ↗
Sources for images shown earlier (10)

Machine Museum image viewer

Period image shown in the dossier.