The
Wurlitzer Company goes back to the 1600s in Germany, manufacturing lutes and
violins. They developed, over
the centuries, band instruments and were famous for jukeboxes.
The Wurlitzer Organ will always be remembered as the Mighty Wurlitzer
theatre organ of the 1920a and 1930s. In
1935, the company discontinued production of these fine instruments.
Just before the involvement of the United States in World War II, the
Wurlitzer Company purchased the Everett Organ Company in Grand Haven,
Michigan, USA. This latter
company was famous for the Orgatron, which was a reed organ
electronically amplified. In
this form, it was not practical and needed many improvements to be a fully
competitive instrument. In the
mid-1960s, the Hammond Organ Company purchased Everett.
After the war, Wurlitzer came out with several models using reeds and
electronic amplification, designated as various models from Model 20 to
Model 50. These instruments
were excellent, I have played several of them in churches and they sounded
exactly like pipe organs. In
1953 and 1954, these models were discontinued and a new, streamlined version
of the reed-electric organ was introduced.
They were the 44 (they did not call it 4400 as they did with other
models), 4600, 4602 and 4800. The
44 was a spinet with nine stops on each manual and three lever controls for
pedal volume and vibrato. The
pedal had a built-in sustain. The
4410 had percussion (Attack and Sustain), and subsequent models with
additional features were called 4420, 4430, etc.
The 4600 had two 61-note manuals and 25 pedals with a standard stop
system without levers. Ken
Griffin used this model for many recordings and his television program 67
Melody Lane, although most of his work was on Hammond and a sparse
amount on Conn. The 4602 was the same as the 4600 but had a 32-note
pedalboard and modification of some of the stops.
It was a church model. Examples
of the changes are: 4600
Strings 8’, 4602 Salicional 8’; 4600 Tone Coloring 2-2/3’, 4602 Nazard
2-2/3’, etc. Also, on the
4600, the pedal stops were Double Bass 16’, Octave Bass 8’, Pedal Soft,
Pedal Medium, Pedal Full, but the 4602 had five traditional organ voices and
volume was controlled through the combination of those stops.
The 4800 was a large two-manual, 32 pedal organ with more stops,
preset stops and a crescendo pedal. One
clarification should be made at this point.
These organs are not actually reed organs in the sense of Grandma’s
old pump organ. The reeds are
only used to produce the vibration necessary to generate a note, which is
then subject to electronics. You
do not actually hear the sound of the reeds.
For more
information about Wurlitzer ree-electric organs, click here for an article
by Eric Larson:
The Wurlitzer
Electrostatic Organ by Eric Larson.
In 1959, Wurlitzer introduced their first electronic organs using
master oscillators. The 4100
was the first model of this type. It
was a standard spinet and included the Slide for Hawaiian guitar and other
effects. The 4460 was the
console version. I made two
personal observations of these instruments:
their stop lists were very close to Lowrey organs at that time, but
the Wurlitzer tone was a little less distinct than Lowrey.
Also, the Slide was a copy of Lowrey’s Glide, which dated back to
1956. Wurlitzer still continued
to manufacture the reed-electric organs until 1964.
Two Wurlitzer inventions also came on the scene.
The Side Man, an automatic rhythm unit was introduced in 1959.
This was a separate unit with its own controls and amplification, and
was smaller than a tone cabinet. Gulbransen,
actually Seeburg, later developed the first rhythm unit built directly into
the organ. Wurlitzer’ other
invention was the Ssh-Boom, which provided bass drum and cymbals sounds when
activated by the keys.
In 1964, Wurlitzer gave up vacuum tubes and went all-transistor.
The Model 4300 was a big spinet with many features and an abundance
of good organ tone. The 4500
was the console version, and uniquely, had the identical stoplist of the
4300. Both of these organs included, for the first time,
Spectra-Tone, which was a rotating speaker system actually built into the
console. It was similar, but
not identical sounding to a Leslie speaker.
These models also included the Ssh-Boom.
Other models of various sizes were also manufactured.
In 1967, the Model 4700 appeared featuring, for the first time since
the reed-electric days, a full-size church organ with 32 pedals.
The next significant development was the introduction of the Orbit
synthesizer, a sub-standard keyboard above the two manuals of the organ.
The first model to include this was the 370 spinet.
It made its way to all models. Eventually,
a genuine Leslie replaced the Spectra-Tone.
In the mid to late 1970s, Wurlitzer developed models that can be
considered the greatest age of the Wurlitzer electronic organ.
The Models 630 and 950 were superlative instruments.
They had theatre voicing, electronic organ sounds, special effects,
automatic left hand and pedal, the Orbit, the Slide and much more.
Other smaller versions were also available.
In 1980, Wurlitzer introduced their so-called “analog-digital”
organs. To a computer person,
this is a laughable term. Although
Wurlitzer did not invent the computer organ, they jumped into it headfirst.
These organs used the microprocessor for the wrong reason, that is,
to generate the automatic left hand and pedal; it should have been used for
the tone generator. These
organs did not have distinct differences in stop voicing, and many people
did not like the “earth tone” colors of the stop tablets.
In the 1980s, Wurlitzer started working with Hohner in Germany, and
manufactured the Omni series of organs in competition to the new portable
keyboards that were crashing into the organ market.
Also, in the 1980s, the Baldwin Piano and Organ Company merged with
the Wurlitzer Company, and produced organs under the name Classic Church
Organs. The combined
Baldwin-Wurlitzer operation collapsed in 1993.
