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VIEW FROM THE TOP
Pro Sound News, November 2006
by: Fred Goodman
Wade Goeke started his company, Chandler Limited, in 2000 around the time his first son, named
Chandler, was born. He was building gear a few pieces at a time in his garage and hoping to
sell one or two units a month to get by. He says he had no real expectations other than making
some cool gear he and a few others would use.
Like many owners and executives in the pro audio industry, Goeke started out as a musician,
singing and playing guitar in bands. He recalls that he has always been into recording and
gadgets, from cassette 4-track to 2-inch tape, and later to Pro Tools. Living in L.A. around
1989, he first worked for an automated concert lighting company called, Vari-Lite, fixing the
lights as they came in dead off of shows and tours. After that, he took a job at Yale
Electronics, an electronics sales company in Hollywood.
There, Goeke worked for David Langford, who was an ex-Neve mechanical engineer and supervisor.
Through Langford, he met many studio owners and technicians and had a small internship with another
ex-Neve friend of David’s. “By this time,” he tells, “I had a fully outfitted 24-track recording
setup complete with Neve 1066 modules that I had built from spare parts and had several offers to
be an assistant engineer. I ended up doing that for several years and realized I did not like the
studio work environment.
After another 1 ½ years with Brent Averill, Goeke went off on his own. “With the birth of my son
and the start of my new company, my wife and I decided to move to Iowa where I grew up,” Goeke
reveals. “There were many reasons why – cost of living, less expensive shop space, and we did not
want to raise our new son in the big city. I now live next door to my brother, a couple miles from
my parents, and seven miles from our 4,000-square-foot shop with no traffic. The move allowed us
as a small start-up company to worry less about overhead and other drawbacks of city life and
concentrate on the gear.”
When discussing the company’s structure, Goeke comments, “Most important to me is that we handle
many things that are normally outsourced, in-house. All of our units are hand-wired and assembled
by people, in America. We stuff our own boards and use actual soldered wires instead of computer
ribbon cables and interlocking circuit boards, etc. Types of construction definitely affect the
sound of the unit, and since we are basically remaking vintage gear as in the EMI/Abbey Road
equipment, or making ‘new vintage’ equipment as in the Germanium series, we will not use any
manufacturing techniques that will change the vintage sound or construction of the units. This
definitely takes more time, money and personnel.”
Goeke emphasizes his biggest rule is that he would not make anything he would not put in his own rack.
“This covers many areas for us. Most importantly, sound but also parts selection, hand-wiring and
build, look and feel of the units. I want to preserve the integrity and build quality of the old
units. There is certainly something special about opening up an old EMI, Neve, Pultec, or even a Vox
amplifier, and I want to get as close to that as possible.”
Goeke says his day-to-day involvement in the company is mostly with developing new products and
interacting with customers. “As far as design,” he adds, “I will usually start with an idea and build
several versions. When I feel I have something, Cody Brown will come into the studio with me and do
massive amounts of listening. From there, we will make changes and have our head technicians, Cameron
{Meyers} and Jeremy {Sage} look the designs over. The process will be repeated over and over until we
are satisfied.” Sometimes they end up building several completely different versions of a unit. “For
example,” Goeke explains, “on the Germanium tone control, I built an active version, a passive version
and then later decided to put them both together into a single unit.”
According to Goeke, Chandler’s rackmount hardware units are doing very well, so now the company has
been moving into other areas to offer more than just the standard mic preamp, EQ and compressor types.
He says that the company’s two biggest moves are with plug-ins and consoles.
The company’s first plug-in was the TG12413 limiter from the Abbey Road recording desk, the same desk
used to record the Beatles and Pink Floyd. Goeke elaborates, “We are just finishing the TG12412 and
TG12414 equalizers from the Abbey Road mastering desks, which have been used on every Abbey Road
mastering session from the early ‘70s to the present. More plug-ins are also in the works.
Goeke also reports that Chandler has a working prototype of its first mixing desk that will be available
from 12 to 48 channels, with 8-bus, 4-send, optional TG limiters on every channel, plus selectable stereo
bus between MKI “Beatles” circuits and MKIV “Pink Floyd” circuits.
Concerning his competitors, Goeke explains, “Competition is not something we prefer to think about. We
just keep our heads down and move forward. Offering a variety of tones such as the EMI and Germanium
series is very important to us as well as venturing into more modern areas such as plug-ins. Basically,
we just try to make things that we would use in our own setups.”
He continues, “Working with Abbey Road developing new gear is definitely a plus. To be able to draw from
their extensive background and talent pool is great.”
When surveying the company’s foreseeable future, Goeke reveals, “We are concentrating on shipping the
Germanium tone controls, TG12413 Zener Limiter, TG12345 Curve Bender and the new EMI equalizer plug-ins.
In the works are more EMI plug-ins, Germanium compressor and many EMI hardware pieces.”
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