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

I know it's been discussed before, but having suffered 5 bits of kit of various types being badly damaged by them, can I please ask people to check the batteries in their Simmons brains.

These batteries are now ~30 years old, and when they break down, they make a terrible mess of the electronics. I've been replacing tracks and components to try to fix my damaged brains.

The tracks on Simmons equipment tend to be very thin, and the breakdown of the batteries corrodes them terribly and burns right through them.

I've removed the batteries from all of my bits of kit, scrubbed the pcb with white vinegar and rinsed it off, which cleans the board nicely, then repaired what needs repairing. I've then either replaced the battery with a new Varta one, or in the case of the SDS9, replaced the RAM with a non-volatile Dallas RAM which works perfectly.

Hopefully this will help save some more Simmons kit...!

Phil.