Simmons (electronic Drum Company) - The Demise of Simmons

The Demise of Simmons

By the time of the launch of the SDX, the company had seen a dramatic fall in their sales as drummers abandoned electronics to return to their acoustic kits. Additionally, due to expensive R&D and manufacturing costs of the SDX, Simmons was losing money. Their final kit was released in 1989, called the SDS-2000, featuring sounds from the SDX library, digital effects, further refined pads, and a new last-ditch company logo. Along with the SDS-2000, Simmons manufactured pads with real drumheads called "Hexaheads", along with "Minihexes", smaller-sized pads sometimes used as cymbal pads. This system failed to catch on, as competitors such as Roland and Yamaha were creating less expensive kits with better sounds. The music scene of the early '90s was different from the late '80s, and the Simmons' sounds, often associated with pop, synth-driven tunes, couldn't find a serious market response in the simplified, more acoustic drumming trends of the grunge and rock styles of the time. During the 90's, Simmons shifted their focus from drum synthesis to drum triggering and MIDI control, with products like the ADT (acoustic drum triger) and Trixter (triggered electric drums (digital samples) from acoustic drum mics), Drum Huggers (small clip-on acoustic drum triggers/pads), and the Silicon Mallet (a xylophone-style MIDI controller). One of Simmons' last products, the Turtle Trap, was a MIDI controller made from the shell of a bass drum pad, with the pads being the surfaces of Minihexes (most likely an attempt to sell off excess inventory). However, all of these products were considered failures, and Simmons was quickly losing momentum. In 1999, the company officially closed.