Wurlitzer 112: Details & Closeups
Our latest Wurlitzer 112 is one of our cleanest yet. Although it's over 60 years old, it sounds fantastic. It still has all of its original parts, including a bench and music rack: two things that usually disappear over the years. We've put together a gallery of all the small details on this beautiful instrument that still impress us.
The Wurlitzer 112, Explained
The Wurlitzer 112 was released in 1955. Excluding some prototypes, it is the first Wurlitzer electronic piano.
As the first of it's kind, the 112 has a lot of interesting features that were phased out in later iterations of Wurlitzer keyboards. First, the pedal is mounted to the side, rather than the bottom. By 1956, even the revised Wurlitzer 112A had a bottom-mounted pedal. Surviving original 112 pedals have become extremely rare.
The 112 also has a unique silhouette: slightly deeper and taller than later Wurlitzers. A vintage keyboard is never going to fade into the wallpaper, but the 112 has a clear presence in a room. Between its size, speckled paint, and midcentury lines, this is definitely a statement piece.
The Wurlitzer 700, Explained
When Wurlitzer first released its electronic pianos in the mid-1950s, they were sleek and modern - almost space-age - in design. Curved cabinets, elegantly tapered legs, bold speckled paint jobs: inside and out, these were the pianos of the future, unlike any pianos ever built before.
And Wurlitzer knew pianos. By 1955, the company had been manufacturing pianos for 75 years: uprights, spinets, compact grands. Wurlitzer did it all: entry-level apartment-friendly pianos, ornate heirloom-quality pianos, chic spinets trimmed in avocado tolex. The unusual design of their first electronic piano - the 112 - was a statement, not a necessity. If Wurlitzer wanted to give it a traditional look, they certainly had the resources to do so.
Enter the 700.
The Wurlitzer 203/210, Explained
Four 8" speakers. Dramatic all-black styling. All the features of an original 200a amplifier. The 210 is truly the Wurlitzer's Wurlitzer.
The Wurlitzer 206 Student Model, Explained
The Wurlitzer 206 is the Wurlitzer that went to school. Equal parts practical and utopian, it was invented to solve an age-old problem: how do you give group lessons on an instrument that weighs half a ton and is taller than the student?
Things You Didn't Know About Wurlitzer #3: For a brief period, Wurlitzer was the premier supplier of automatic harps to San Francisco brothels.
In 1911, Wurlitzer became the top supplier of automatic harps to brothels in the Barbary Coast, San Francisco's red-light district.
But first, what is an automatic harp? Why would anyone, let alone a brothel, want one?
In the late 1890s, Wurlitzer released the Tonophone, a coin-operated player piano that it marketed to restaurants. The Tonophone was so successful that Wurlitzer followed it with other, increasingly elaborate automatic instruments.
Things You Didn't Know About Wurlitzer #2: Wurlitzer was a major company throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
It's easy to mistake Wurlitzer as the little-brother rival to the Fender Rhodes. For one, Fender is still around dominating the market, while Wurlitzer faded away in the 1980s.
In fact, Wurlitzer has a much more storied past than Fender. Wurlitzer was founded nearly a hundred years before Fender, and was a huge retailer of acoustic pianos (among other instruments) back when household electricity was just a mad scientist's fever dream.
More about the Tonophone
Coin-operated, pneumatic, and capable of a ten-song playlist, the Tonophone was released by Wurlitzer in 1897. At the heart of the Tonophone was a cylinder that ran the width of the piano. This cylinder was covered in raised metal pins that sort of resemble staples of varying lengths.
As the song played, the cylinder continuously rotated, and as it did, the pins would lift levers: one lever for each note. In turn, the levers opened valves that pneumatically operated the keys.
Things You Didn't Know About Wurlitzer #1: The first Wurlitzer electric piano dates to 1899.
This would be the Wurlitzer Tonophone, an early example of a player piano. Powered pneumatically, it featured a system of levers, one corresponding to each key, that "read" a rotating wooden cylinder covered in raised pins.
Wurlitzer sold the Tonophone to restaurants. It was coin-operated, and for five cents patrons could pick one of ten songs. Because songs were so short, they would play through twice.
