The Wurlitzer electric piano was produced by the American Wurlitzer company from 1954, when its first model went into production in North Tonawanda, New York, until the early 1980s. Instead of strings, each key drives a small hammer onto a flat steel reed; the vibrating reed forms part of an electrostatic pickup, based on an earlier design by the inventor Benjamin Miessner, and the signal feeds a built-in amplifier and speaker. Tuning is adjusted by adding or filing solder on the reed tip. The model 120 of 1956 added tremolo, and the portable 200 and 200A series became the best known.
Compared with the Rhodes the sound is more nasal and reedy, with a characteristic bark when played hard. It is heard on Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say” and on Supertramp records, and in jazz lo-fi it offers a slightly grittier, more vintage alternative to Rhodes chords.