Electronic Drum Kits - That Was Then

My back-history of electronic kits!

I played an electronic kit back in the late 80's, early 90's.  In fact, now I think of it, I played basically the same kit for almost ten years!

Simmons SDS2000 - best avoided!

I started with the SDS 2000 kit back in 1988 and I firmly blame Rick Allen from Def Leppard for this.  The Hysteria album came out in 1987 and made heavy use of sampled drums, machines, sequencers and loops.  

Rick had lost an arm in a car accident and used the making of Hysteria to recover and basically, learn how to play again.  In order to do what he had done before, and all the things he wanted to on Hysteria, technology had to play a big part.   Already a Leppard fan, I fell in love with Hysteria the moment I heard it.  When I saw them at Castle Donington just before the album came out, and a while later on the Hysteria tour I wanted to sound like that.  Rick was using Simmons pads (that was basically all there was!) and a collection of electronics, so naturally I just had to follow suit.

I went for the Simmons SDS2000 kit which was their flagship in '89.  I added a second bass drum  and rather than the Simmons rack I went for a Dixon one which seemed more customizable.  Within a year or so I realized (along with everybody else) that for all their early  innovation - Simmons were going nowhere.  I replaced the dreadful SDS2000 brain with an Alesis D4 in about 1990.  The cymbal sounds were still pretty bad, so I used regular Sabians.  By today's standards the D4 is pretty primative.  But back then, it gave you hundreds of digital samples and a bunch of trigger inputs for almost no money.
The main issue I had was carting along my own PA to amplify the thing.  If you thought you would carry less gear with an electronic kit - you're wrong!

After another year or so I managed to get a  Simmons Hexahead for the snare pad, and a few Minihexes for special effects before Simmons finally went out of production in '94. 

Hexahead - still didn't feel like a drum!

Minihex. Cute, but almost uselessly small!

The only reason I know this isn't me?  This chap is wearing a tie!

I'm not sure my wrists will ever recover from using those Simmons pads for a decade.  Basically, they were plywood with a thin bit of rubber glued on top.  Yes, they did provide some rebound, but they never felt like drums (even the Hexahead) and good grief they were hard work on the hands!!  The Hexahead did use a real drum skin with a section of foam underneath.  However, the drum was completely plastic, so there was no effective way of tensioning the head.  The Multihex pads were basically the same technology as the full size pads but all plastic.  Useful for triggering occasional notes like cowbells etc, but that's pretty much it.

In the late 90's I moved back to acoustic drum kits.  Electronic kits have come a very long way since then.  I'm thinking of getting one again for practicing and maybe function gigs as well, but I don't see the day when I will go back to using one full-time.

Watch this space for my views on the current state of electronic drums!