Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Vintage Simmons Drums (UK) Users Group

Hello everyone,
that's my first post here and - of course - it's a request of help.
I am from Italy and I'm not sure if my english is correct and clear...hope it is enough.

I play in a new wave cover band and we use a SDS 8 brain with three Dynacord pads for occasional '80 drum sounds, such as the classic electronic Simmons tom with a very long decay (which can be heard for example on Visage's "Fade To Grey": it's that "tsciuuuuuuuuuuu" sound).

A couple of weeks ago, our SDS8 brain had a problem with the internal electric transformer, which seems dead.
When the SDS 8 broke down, we bought a Simmons SDS 1000, because we thought we would've got the SDS 8 sounds we needed.
We tried to get that kind of electronic tom with a very long decay, but the decay control on the SDS 1000 allows just a quite short decay.

Well, the ways to solve this problem are several and here start my requests of help:
1) does anyone have a SDS 8 internal electric transformer as spare part, or do you know if there are non-Simmons transformer compatible with the SDS 8?

2) do you know if it's possible to obtain that kind of sound with the SDS 1000?

3) do you know of a reliable drum module/racks which can reproduce that kind of sound (and more in general the SDS8 sounds?).

Of course, we are also interested in buying a SDS 8 brain in working consditions.
We also have a damaged SDS9 brain useful maybe for spare parts to sell/exchange.
And if the SDS 1000 proves not to be the right stuff for us, we'll sell it too. More info and photos of the SDS9 and SDS1000 on request.

Thanks for any help!
Ciao from Italy
Roger Marchi