Wurlitzer Electronic Piano

A portable piano as not an easy thing to find in the ’70′s. There was the Rhodes which weighed a ton and sounded, well, like a Rhodes. Not that a Rhodes sounds bad at all but it is not a rock piano nor does it translate well in country music. Ray Charles and many piano greats used Wurlitzers as did Supertramp.I bought my first Wurlitzer in 1975 and traded it in in 1981 for another piano.

The first thing you did was lose the legs. Well, I never lost them I put them and the music stand in storage and had may brother, a motorcycle mechanic, to make me a longer sustain pedal cable. This way, I could perch the piano on top of the Hammond M3 I was using.

The piano was invented by Ben F. Meissner, who was inventing a design to “electrify” acoustic pianos. Wurlitzer, the jukebox and organ company, took over the development and tried to come up with a electric version of the Rhodes. They went for a felt-dressed hammer hitting a metallic reed. The vibrations from the stroke on the reeds was picked up by a pickup system converting the tone into electric sound. With speakers on the front and a phone jack for headphones it became a popular piano in schools.

Tuning the Wurlitzer was right out of a movie. You used a soldering gun and, while connecting the piano to an electronic tuner, took off or put on as much solder as was needed to make the needle go to A440.

Just like the electric grand, I’d love to have another one!