Roger Nichols WENDEL jr Drum Sampler/Drum Replacer/Playback Unit MINT +Full Sound Kit

In brief, this is WENDELjr serial number 334 from the Clair Brothers that Roger Nichols had written about because EVERY live band had this used on their shows to project the drums, especially metal bands like Ratt, etc.. 1.5 days of tech time was just put into this one in 2024. The full listing follows:

Note that there is only one (1) unit (s.n. 334) with seven (7) sound boards for sale here. This is all shown in the photos with the seven (7) sound boards, and that is what you get with the purchase from this listing.

Also if someone wants me to list just the sound kit for some other WENDELjr they bought from a chump and have no sounds for it, it's $799.00 for the seven sounds on seven boards.

Collectors choice!!!

This is the legendary WENDEL jr drum replacement system sample playback unit in very good cosmetic condition and perfect working condition, with a full drum kit of 7 sounds on 7 sound boards.

This is truly excellent---just look at the photos---and it works perfectly. All controls work like brand new, and the sound is fantastic.

A full kit of the very best sounds are included here: Kick drum, snare drum, tom, closed hi hat, open hi hat, ride cymbal, and crash cymbal. The snare drum is the most famous one, and the ride cymbal is the famous 11 second ride cymbal that is played back from 16 different ROM chips spread across two boards that go in both slots at the same time. The crash cymbal is also a two cartridge sound.

WENDELjr is NOT another drum machine. WENDELjr is a state of the art, digital, percussion sound replacement device. That is, the basic function is to replace the horrible drum sounds produced by any 'drum machine', and replace drum sounds already recorded on tape, whether they were produced by a machine or a real drummer. The trigger response time is so quick (total trigger delay does not exceed 32 microseconds), that in many cases the new drum sound may appear as if it were happening early. In addition to the ultrafast triggering, the drum sound can be tuned over a 2 octave range from the front panel control.

WENDELjr has the unique ability to track drum fills and complex patterns. When a live drummer plays a flam or fast fills on the snare drum, he does not use just one hand to hit the drum, he uses both hands. Each hand strikes the drum head in a slightly different place, at a slightly different angle and intensity. These two beats in a row, therefore, do not sound the same. When WENDELjr detects the difference in timing which represents the drum fill, it switches to an alternate drum sound. The difference in quality between a WENDELjr snare drum and a snare drum from any other drum machine is so drastic, that many times just replacing the snare drum will make the entire drum kit sound real.

The sounds recorded for WENDELjr are not chopped off at the end. The natural decay of the drum is totally preserved in the memory chips. All drums are recorded at the full 50 kHz sample rate, providing more than 92 db of dynamic range and full 20 kHz bandwidth. Even low toms and kick drums are recorded at this sample rate. It took more than 40 hours in the studio to come up with the snare and kick sounds that are supplied as the standard sounds that come with WENDELjr. Special attention was paid to high fidelity. The snare contains all of the basics for most of your snare drum requirements. Full rich bottom end, pleasant tone, crisp snares, all blended to allow the WENDELjr user to equalize or process the sound to fit any rhythm track. As with all sounds available for WENDELjr, the fidelity was achieved by recording with no equalization. The sounds were obtained by changing microphones, replacing drums, drum heads, kick drum beaters, whatever was necessary to make it sound right without touching the EQ knob.

All the guys you know who have WENDELjr units? They don't have these sounds, do they? Do you know why? It's because the ride cymbal sound alone cost $454.00 in 1987, the crash cymbal just slightly less, and even short single sounds were $80.00. Most of the sounds in here are unheard-of rare.

There are four ways to trigger the drum sounds in this WENDELjr unit:

1) Press the button on the front panel. Though it is mainly an audition button, it actually can be used to put a clap or two in a track, and can also be used as a mute button if held. For example, if you don't want it to trigger off the snares in a mellow first verse, just hold the button down until the end of that verse, then release it, and it will trigger from there.

2) From drum pads or piezo triggers. They can be plugged in the trigger input. Many, many professional touring drummers use the WENDELjr to date.

3) Triggering from electronic audio sources. You can connect the audio line out from the multitrack tape recorder to the WENDELjr trigger input jack. You can also connect the click track or metronome audio, or almost any percussive audio source to this, and the front panel controls will let you control what it hears and what it ignores.

4) Triggering from computer/sequencer electronic sources. You can connect the audio outputs (or in some case even electronic pulses) from a track of your DAW, the individual drum outputs from a drum machine like a LinnDrum, LM-1, 9000, DMX, MPC60, etc. right to the trigger input jack, and the front panel controls will let you clean it up and control what it hears and what it ignores.

A list of WENDELjr users is an absolute who's who in the music business, and not just in the 80s, but now in the 2010s.

The Corrs use the WENDELjr because they like the kick drum sound.

Engineer Tony Blanc is using two WENDELjr units with Rihanna live, also recording the show (source: Rihanna Tour Profile - Mix Online - HIP-HOP DIVA BRINGS EDGINESS TO THE STAGE).

In the 80s, the professional recording/live use of the WENDELjr pretty much started with Duran Duran, the WENDELjr system was credited as a person on the So Red the Rose, the platinum-selling album by the Duran Duran spinoff group Arcadia which was released in 1985.

Billboard Magazine reported in 1986 that WENDEL jr units were tested/used by Stevie Wonder, Joe Walsh (The Eagles), Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), Jeff Porcaro (Toto, Boz Scaggs, etc.), John Denver, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, and others.

It's the only machine with its own album discography page, there are several of them!

Here is a partial lists of other artists/producers that have used the WENDELjr:

DAVID FOSTER
DE BARGE
ROBBIE BUCHANAN
PINK FLOYD
GEORGE BENSON
PAUL SIMON
CHRISTOPHER CROSS
BRUCE HORNSBY
KENNY ROGERS
LEO SAYER
AL JARREAU
JOE COCKER
CRUSADERS
DIANA ROSS
TEMPTATIONS
KASHIF
MILES DAVIS
JAY GRAYDON
NEIL YOUNG
HUEY LEWIS
REO SPEEDWAGON
STEVE WINWOOD
FRANK SINATRA
ROD STEWART
STARSHIP
Z. Z. TOP
BANGLES
INXS
CHINA CLUB
PAUL SIMON
DAVID LEE ROTH
EDDIE MURPHY
HEART
SUPERTRAMP
WENDY & LISA
BELINDA CARLISLE

Even the kick drums on Nirvana Nevermind were from the WENDELjr!

From then until now, live sound production companies were using WENDELjr units for all kick and snare drums, sometimes more than that, to make clear live sound out of drums that sounded like cardboard. This was true of almost all metal bands across the board, from Ratt to Metallica.

I think that there are five keys to the still-legendary status of the WENDELjr:

1) The lordlike status of Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols and that he spent much of his life creating this, and of course putting the best drum sounds of an incredible lifetime into it.

2) The high sampling rate (50kHz, adjustable over a very wide range and measurable from the rear of the unit) and bit resolution (16-bit) of the playback hardware, and of course the extremely high quality drum sounds as well.

3) The hundreds of top recording artists/producers who used the WENDELjr.

4) The ability WENDELjr has to track natural drum playing patterns, both with the bizarre control logic meant to capture it (read the labels on the control panel) and with many sounds having a left hand and a right hand sample to make flams and fills and drum rolls that sound normally instead of the rapid fire machine gunning effect you'd get with a LinnDrum or similar.

5) Probably most important, the blindingly fast drum sound triggering that it has, still unmatched by anything in the world today.

While the super fast triggering has been widely known and understood, it wasn't necessarily quantified by independent scientific sources until recently:

E-drum pad latency analysis on the Innerclock Systems website tested many units to measure the time from a drum pad strike to the resulting drum sound output. The WENDELjr triggered unbelieveably fast, in less than a tenth of a millisecond! It was actually 0.07 milliseconds, which is the time of 3.5 samples at a DAW project sampling rate of 48kHz. And this is four times better than Nichols said it was ("total trigger delay does not exceed 32 microseconds").

A typical time might be 154 samples for a Roland Drum Sound Module TD-15 or 431 samples for a Yamaha DTX-502. Nothing else was even close to the WENDELjr. Some other very old things like the Simmons Digital Clap Trap and Amdek PCK-100 were 17 and 19 samples, respectively, which isn't even close, the WENDELjr could have fired off five times by then...

I wonder how Nichols shortened the triggering time so much?

The kit of drum sounds that ARE INCLUDED with this unit for sale are described below:

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(This is copied verbatim from the WENDEL jr system operation manual, though some mistakes have been corrected, with user notes added after each entry.)

Heart kick/snare
(DUAL SOUND CART)

A kick drum. The best all around kick. A little more puff to this one than KH2, but not something to sneeze at. Between this one and KH2, all of your kick drum requirements for the next decade should be covered.

This is the stock snare drum that comes with WENDELjr. A nice cross between SN-1 and SN-1b. This snare cost more than your WENDELjr. I'm glad I don't have to beat on the real one anymore.

User notes: A good, versatile kick drum that can be EQ'd into many different types of kick drums. Snare is deep, bright, and kind of like a hi-fi version of the LinnDrum or Linn 9000 snare drum. Or, said another way, deep and powerful like the 9000 snare, but bright like the LinnDrum snare.

Tom-2
(-D- SOUND CARTS)

A typical tom tom. Notice that one hi-fi recorded tom can be used for many tom applications. Tuned down low, it sounds like a great floor tom. Tuned up high, it sounds like a little tom, not like a Mickey Mouse rendition of a larger tom.

User notes: Just about the best tom sound, and this is probably the best all around WENDELjr cart, as it sounds great throughout the entire tuning range, and that can't often be said about something from the variable rate sampling (Synclavier, Fairlight, LinnDrum, Emulator, etc.) era.

Hi hat-2A/hat open
(DUAL SOUND CART)

Closed hi-hat. Nice hi-hat. Cute hi-hat. The open hi-hat, when used in conjunction with the closed hi-hat, HH2a, you can track and replace open-closed hi-hat patterns that were generated by a drum machine.

User notes: Excellent hi-hat sounds. It's worth $100 just to hear it once.

Ride cymbal (Ride Cym-1)
(-H- LONG SOUND)

This two cartridge set is a long sound. That is, the sound was too long to fit in one cartridge, so we had to put it in two cartridges. CYMA must go in slot "1". CYMB must go in slot "2". The function of the "CART SELECT" switch will be locked in the "ALT" position. The "1" and "2" lights above the cart select switch will indicate which one of the cartridges is producing the sound as it is being played.

User notes: A sparkling, stunning ride cymbal sound with 11 seconds of natural decay.

Crash cymbal (Crash Cym-1)
(-E- LONG SOUND)

This two cartridge set is a long sound. That is, the sound was too long to fit in one cartridge, so we had to put it in two cartridges. CYMA must go in slot "1". CYMB must go in slot "2". The function of the "CART SELECT" switch will be locked in the "ALT" position. The "1" and "2" lights above the cart select switch will indicate which one of the cartridges is producing the sound as it is being played.

A sound so rare it isn't even in the WENDELjr literature.

User notes: An excellent crash cymbal with a hard attack and a long, natural decay. Has a very different character at different tunings, so it is versatile.
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The drum sounds are on new old stock sound cart PCBs of the latest revision made. I switched the chips myself to have the sound library it has now (they were all the same before). All the sound boards chips are covered with protective antistatic heat shrink tubing before they are shipped, that prevents metal to metal contact when they are put in the cartridge openings in the front of the unit. I had some of the boards, but none of the plastic cartridge casings, so this is how I do them now. It's a blessing to have them, because most WENDEL jr units out there in the world don't have any sounds at all. Only Synhouse has EVER made these available.

About myself, major electronic music restorer and decades-long collector, probably no one living who knows more about these particular units than I do now. And the original WENDEL unit, the real WENDEL unit, the one that was used on Donald Fagen The Nightfly in 1981 (some have called it WENDEL II, but Nichols said in 1984 that it was the 1981 unit used on The Nightfly that was called WENDEL, not the  one from 1979 or possibly a little sooner), the system that mastered and edited all the sounds used in the WENDELjr carts, is in my personal collection. The Synclav com YouTube channel has my two videos about it, "WENDEL (Roger Nichols/Steely Dan) Drum Computer - Not the WENDELjr, the REAL WENDEL!" and "WENDEL (Roger Nichols/Steely Dan) Drum Computer Article From Infoworld 1984 - Describes CompuPro".

This will be packed very, very carefully for shipment. It will be in a well over sized box packed with a lot of solid foam. Synhouse has shipped electronic music machines to 42 countries, trust me that this will be packed to arrive safely.

Please see my other listings as well, many treasured items from my electronic music collection are being sold to raise money for big projects. Very likely to list the Don Henley Linn LM-1 Drum Computer with remote control for individual tuning of all drums, it is the only one that has ever existed in the world. Or Supertramp's $17,000 Yamaha GS1. Or the finest Sequential T8 in the world. Or maybe my Oberheim Matrix-12. I have big projects waiting for the funds.

All text and all photos are the copyrighted property of Synhouse Multimedia Corporation. No one may use it. No one may use any part of it. This text is not "information" "copied from the web", this is my own writing and therefore protected by copyright and Synhouse has been taking action against other sellers copying this material since the year 2000. My WENDELjr text is particularly egregious, the listing text for ONE unit was stolen by at least three different sellers over two years, and those are just the ones I noticed, and action was taken against all of them. One of them will eventually find out the hard way that they have a lifetime ban from all Synhouse products and services and are on the blocked bidder list. Because they have bought before. Never again.