Vintage Simmons Drums (UK) Users Group

Small information ;-):
It's true, that all these factories use the same Eproms- like you use the
same memory cards for your digital camera, mp3-player or whatever. But- only
the chips. The sounds, the sampling rate, size and even the format were
different, f. e. it's not possible to play back Linn 9000 Proms on any
Simmons unit, the format has to be changed with an oberheim prommer. Linn
and Oberheim packed their large sounds like Cymbals in up to 8 Proms 2732,
because that was cheaper than one big chip. Simmons never "stole" sounds by
copying from other machines.
Eproms used by the simmons product range are: 2732 (only on SDSV digital HH
and Cymbal), 2764 (SDS7,SDS9,SDS1), 27128 (SDS7, SDS9, SDS1) and 27256 (SDS7
Cymbal and HH). The SDS1000 Eprom contains all 4 snare sounds in a row and
is a 27256, sometimes a 27512 with no audible difference, only the first
half is playbacked.
The SDS5 digital Cymbal and Hihat read out their eproms with a
forward/backward counter permanently to create a loop. So the sound can be
as long as the decay control allowes. But the sample itself was only a small
portion of a metallic hiss (decay of a cymbal, no attack), so it doesn't
made any sense to convert it for another machine. There never was a library
for SDSV Cym and HH sounds, and they were never in the SDS7's library (too
short). A fully equipped SDS5 at its best is recorded on "White Horse" by
Laid Back. The Cym can be heared with nice sweep f. e. on Stevie Wonder's "I
just called to say I love you".
All other SDS read out one-shot. All Simmons original eproms have a sampling
frequency around 32khz and have a bandwith of 8 bit. The format is linear.
For SDS7 I made a little modification on some cards to playback 27512 Eproms
containing large cymbals and timpanies.
The old harsh 8bit cymbal sounds are easy to get even without the old
equipment - on pc or mac: Grab a normal 16bit cymbal sample, compress it
very hard and transform it down to 8bit mono with low sampling rate. This
can be done easily by f. e. Steinberg Wavelab. Then convert it back to 16bit
stereo,44.1khz and use it in a software of your choice.
Have fun
Michael