Classic Hifi Care

I really did not find this, I knew the person had it and I had said several times that I did not want it, but....

Yesterday, I got a call from a friend, kind of a hoarder of electronic anything, telling me he was cleaning house and the Wurlitzer speaker was going by the road along with other things. All I knew about the organ speaker was it was a Wurlitzer, up to this point I had not seen it. He told me they were going away but the speaker was outside the garage and if it was still there when they got back, they would know I did not want it. Pulling into the driveway I saw it sitting there and thought this is a Leslie speaker not a Wurlitzer, the cabinet looked the same as a Leslie. Nope, it was a Wurlitzer Spectra-tone organ speaker with amp. Wurlitzer Spectra-tone organ speakers was Wurlitzer's version of a Leslie speaker. The Wurlitzer model number is 420, and the amp number is 7045. 5U4GB rectifier, PP 7027A's, 12AU7A, and 7199. The 5U4, and 7099 are labeled Wurlitzer by RCA. The 12AU7 and 7027's are branded GE. Here's a few photos of what it looks like:

Bill

You know more about those than I certainly do, but my observation is that there are lots of spendy parts in that speaker. Well worth curb picking for that fact alone....

Super nice catch Bill.

I also thought it was a Leslie design.

I'll have to post about my similar experience with a Magnatone TC-1
that was also a curb find !

That's a nice mono amp, make a good center channel amp. 7027a tubes themselves are pretty desirable.
Wonder what went into the spaces where the blanking panels are?

When I was a music major in college in the early 70's there was a local rock band comprised of several of my classmates.

One was a keyboardist with a Hammond B3/Leslie setup. It was custom bi-amped and sounded great but he kept blowing both woofer & horn driver. I tried everything to get it bulletproof, to the point where I used an Altec 290 "Giant Voice" driver for the horn. This worked fine but the bottom end speaker was never up to the power level. Not even the legendary Altec 421 bass instrument speaker.

One day a salesman from Cetec Gauss came by, saying he'd heard we were modifying stage speakers and had something to show us. On a cart, was a massive 15" with huge magnet. He asked if could demo it for our group, and we started getting things out to play on.

He said we needn't bother, as it was already set up to demo. At this point he unrolled a cord, and just plugged it into a power receptical. It made an unholy 60 Hz noise, literally vibrating the whole band room. A minute or two of this was wholly convincing.

No harm came to it from this, two were sold that day!

I'd not seen a speaker configured like that one. Does the speaker revolve, as opposed to the rotating baffle of the Leslie? Our high school stage organ had it's front and rear panels removed so one could see it's Leslie in action.

Rex, there is a double (back-to-back) set of speakers mounted to the upper rotating thing. They are only 4" with a counterweight at the other end. The bass speakers is in the bottom chamber under the amp and its stationary.

Leslie built many different types/kinds of their units. The most desirable ones were two channel they were the ones with either a 12" or 15" multirange speaker pointing down with a rotating drum below the speaker. The second channel consisted of a rotating horn. Both channels had their own motors, and the amps were split frequency kind of like Magnavox. These models were paired with the Hammond B3's giving you that famous Hammond/Leslie sound that so many Jazz artist insist on.

Bill

Such a great speaker! Please don't use organ gear to make more of already overabundant guitar gear. _SAVE THE ORGANS_ This would have been a Wurlitzer SpectraTone for the great Wurlitzer electrostatic continuous free-reed organs, models 4600 (the 25 pedal "holy grail" full console, 2 x61 keys), 4601 ( the same organ as 4600, but traditional classical Italian labeling on the tabs, and iirc there is a single resistor internally located in the Reed Chest, which when removed it becomes the same as a 4600. Check out Glenn Derringer's 4600 Electrostatic Continuous Free Reed organ album on YouTube. Here, or the link below. On Youtube search "Glenn Derringer Topic" , then choose "Young Ideas" playlist. From the beginning Wurlitzer used the theory that one cannot hear the location of low frequencies, to make their Leslie-like Rotary speakers. In fact it was Don Leslie's first attempt at a rotor that he ended up using later, for Wurlitzer, on their 310 Vibrato Speaker cabinet for their 1948- 1953 Wurlitzer electrostatic Keyed-Reed Series 31 Organ. I happen to have the Series 31 organ and 310 speaker. Below I explain how Wurlitzer used the low frequency theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXvvNxf ... ZAVU7tbAxs

Wurlitzer started from the beginning using the principle that because you can't place where low frequencies are in space, it's best to just 'Tremolo' them (AM- Amplitude Modulate). The Wurlitzer 310 Vibrato speaker has an upper 12" speaker metal vane-rotor, which was actually the design from Don Leslie. Don's unused predecessor to the wooden drum rotor. For the "bass rotor" they didn't use a rotor at all. Instead they just put a super low inaudible 5hz oscillation on the speaker. You can literally see the heavy paper cone of the 15" Magnavox field coil speaker move up and down an inch! About...well, put one hand flat on your other and lift it an inch and back down 5 times a second, and that's what the speaker cone looks like. I'm not so sure that a normal permanent magnet thinner paper cone speaker can do that. Now the way the SpectraTone speakers oscillate the bass is to just turn the volume up and down. Actually Spectratones have an offset arm that moves a piston in and out of a copper wire coil, that lowers the volume as the speakers move away. Lending to a more dramatic volume shift. The engineers were inspired by this and for the 1964-1971 4500, 4520 Theatre , and 4300 spinet, Wurlitzer utilized a disc on the outside of the unit, centered on the axle, and the out6side edge of the disc has a gradual taper. They placed a light bulb on one side of the edge and a photocell (light dependent resistor) on the other side. When the SpectroTone rotates the resistance of the photocell is fed to a VCA (Voltage Controlled Amplifier), where the 2-12" speakers in the organ raise and lower volume opposite one another. Thus giving the sense of motion back and forth in the two bass speakers to match the physical rotation of the vertical spinning spectraTone speakers travelling horizontal to the organist on the bench. The '64- '68 model organs I mentioned have stationary louvered slots on the top of the organ so the organist and everyone else can hear the sound travelling left to right from the top of the organ, for a full room filling sound. They sloganed, "You can't hear with your knees".