Franklin W. Welker (born March 12, 1946) is an American voice actor. He is responsible for a broad spectrum of character voices, noises, and other vocal effects that have appeared over the last 40 years in American television and motion pictures. He is listed as the number one "All Time Top 100 Stars at the Box office" in terms of the total revenue his films have generated. His work in over 90 films has put him ahead of Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks and Samuel L. Jackson.

n the 1980s, Welker voiced Megatron, Soundwave and his cassettes, the Dinobot Sludge, and Galvatron in place of Leonard Nimoy (Season 3) in the Transformers cartoon. In this he formed a team with Chris Latta, who voiced Starscream, Megatron's second-in-command. In 1988, Welker did the voice of Rulon leader Krulos in the TV-series Dino-riders. In this cartoon he again formed a team with Chris Latta, who (coincidentally?) voiced Rasp, Krulos' second-in-command. In G.I. Joe, Welker also teamed with Latta. (Other actors who featured in Transformers, Dino-riders and G.I. Joe are Jack Angel, Charlie Adler and Peter Cullen.) In a famous goof from Transformers, Soundwave's unmodulated voice was revealed to be nearly identical to that of Dr. Claw of Inspector Gadget