I finally ordered some items from Vintage Vibe to start fixing up the Wurli. All I’ve done so far is replace all of the damper felts, the volume knob, and coated the insides with metal tape. It really didn’t take that much time and was pretty inexpensive. It turns out the 700 Series is basically the same inside as the 120 Series, and the 120 has cheaper parts than the more popular 200. There is still some engineering work to be done on it, which I will probably post about sometime later, also with pictures.

The old felts basically disintegrated to the touch so it was pretty easy to remove them. I used a nail file to get the remaining bits of 50 year old glue off of the wood. I must say, the new damper felts definitely make a world of difference in the sound! I have included a video to show you the difference between the sound of the notes with and without the felts. Notice how it sounds all eerie and sustained without them, and a lot more crisp with them.

Another thing I did was coat the under side of the lid, the front piece, the surface above the space containing the electrical parts, and the back piece (the part that doesn’t show) with metal tape in order to construct a “Faraday shield” to prevent some of the humming. This probably won’t be enough to get rid of all of it without some other work on the power supply, which my dad will take care of. He’s also going to connect all of the now-metal surfaces with other wiring to complete the shield.

We also replaced the potentiator, which Vintage Vibe did not carry. My dad managed to find a comparable one somewhere else and now there is no more popping when I turn on the piano.

Tags: 120 series, 700 series, amplifier, damper felts, hum, restoration, vintage vibe, wurlitzer

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 8:28 am and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.