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Messages - jmal999

#1
The Wurlitzer Electric Piano / Wurlitzer 700 help
August 21, 2019, 09:34:59 PM
Hello,

Brand new member here, so thanks in advance for the help and for tolerating any faux pas I may make. I received a Wurlitzer 700 for free from a neighbor down the street and I would like to get it into some type of playable shape. I am not a keyboardist, so it doesn't have to be perfect, but it definitely has some room for improvement.

The issue I am facing right now is a considerable gap between the majority of the dampers to the reeds. I have attached a not very great picture to better illustrate what the problem is. I removed the completely deteriorated green foam looking dampers that were on the arms and replaced them with dampers from Vintage Vibe. Admittedly, the Vintage Vibe dampers did not really come with instructions, so I may not have installed them correctly. They appear to be very slightly rectangular, and I installed them where the width of the damper matched up with the damper arm. Had I installed it the other way, there is a chance I could have gotten a little more length out of the damper, but they just seemed to fit right the way I installed them. I am just not sure.

After installing the dampers, I twisted the damper level lift dowel to try and drop the damper arms, but I am having to turn it so much that the keys are dropping in the key bed. That coupled with the fact that most of the dampers are more than an 1/8th of an inch off of the reeds makes me think maybe there is another problem going on here.

I did search the Wurlitzer part of the forum before I decided to post this and read all of the 120 and 700 posts I could find. One user discovered that the damper rod was not pulled up all the way and that was causing all of his dampers to not touch the reeds. I did try to pull back on the damper rod assembly and cannot get the rod to lift anymore than it already is, so I am thinking that is likely not the problem. I also wondered if the rubber washers under the harp have degraded over time and have caused the harp to drop. I did wedge some guitar picks under the harp to lift it a bit and that may have helped somewhat, but I would need to lift it even further to get things where they need to be. I may try that next.

Any thoughts on where to go next, or what I am doing wrong? I don't think I can really work on the action until I get the dampers working. Honestly, most of the keys work well enough that I can tolerate them - just a dozen or so need tweaking - and the amp works, so I will have a fairly useable piano if I can get this part sorted out.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!