Maxim MDS 1000 - Simmons SDS V clone from the 1987

Published on Feb 4, 2017 100 Things I Do

"The Maxim MDS 1000 is a 1:1 design clone of the classic Simmons SDS 5. How close a clone you may ask? Well, I was able to use SDS V schematics to repair the MSD1000!

The majority of the board is consumed with logic chips for the preset bank selection. Other than that its very basic where you have tone , noise and bend as you main generators, followed with a Decay envelope. As you can see I picked up this unit in very sorry but complete state (with some original Maxim SDS Copy drum pads).

Due to cheap production of the PCB it suffered from a lot of broken solder joints, and some horrible layout. Traces will break and lift almost no matter what you do when working on the PCB. The Main connector between the front panel and the PCB is a major point of pain and I ended up running point to point wires to stop this failing in future. I still have not fixed the logic on the Low tom and the Bass Tom needs a new SSM 2044 and Sensitivity potentiometer.

All in all if you can find one at a good price (and you have the ability to do some tweaking of the Filter and noise inside the unit) you have a source of true analog SDS V sounds at what should be much less cost than an original."

There have only been a handful of Maxim MDS 1000 posts on the site.