80's Simmons drum kits. What were the best kits?

[Chorused Clean]

Hello:

 

I am looking into exploring some vintage 80's drum sounds. I am thinking about buying a used Simmons kit with brain. Which were the best one's from the 80's? Which models? Are complete sets with brain hard to find used? Also, would anyone care to share a pic of a cool Simmons kit? Thanks.

[mkcee]

 

The ultimate Simmons kit, Bill Bruford's monstrosity circa 1989.

 

[dave17oh]

the sdx is the rarest and most sought after simmons kit. there were only 250 ever made, and they were about 10,000 dollars for the base model kit. I picked one up about a year ago and i love it. i searched for a few years before i got ahold of one, so you might not want to hold out for one. but i hear that the sdsv is a realy good kit, but they're also pretty hard to find completely in tact. i had an sds8 and hated it. your best bet for information on simmons is to go to the yahoo simmons group and look at all the archived posts. there's a ton of information on there.

[kenm]

Hollow Sun has samples of the Simmons SDSV you could trigger from any sampler here:

 

http://www.hollowsun.com/vintage/sds5/index.html

 

I remember the pads were hard and I would rather have a kit with those mesh head these days. I can see why you would want vintage though. Good luck.

 

Ken

[STFU]

As I recall, the original kits with the plastic playing surfaces were giving people arm and shoulder problems, thus the move to rubber surfaces.