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What instrument is the "60's E. Piano" modeled after?


anonday

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Hey, I have a Privia PX-320 with a "60's E. Piano" setting. Which electric piano is this modeled after? I love the responsive, harsh tone I get when I increase the velocity and hit the keys harder. Can anyone explain why this particular electric piano does this? The other electric pianos on this Privia don't have a harsh responsive tone. They just get louder.

 

So, I wanna know

 

1. What instrument is the "60's E. Piano" modeled after

2. What is it about the 60's electric pianos that creates a harsh responsive tone with increased velocity?

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1. "Wurlitzer Electronic Piano"  ("Electronic" is how Wurlitzer marketed it but we would call it just an electric piano today.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wurlitzer_electric_piano

 

2. The "Wurlitzer Electronic Piano" ("wurli" for short) uses a reed that is struck by a small hammer for each key. The reed's vibration is turned into an electrical signal. When you hit a key hard a form of distortion happens in the circuit, resulting in that "harsh responsive tone." 

 

Personally, I quite like the sound of a Wurli, especially when the keys are hit hard. A lot of recordings from the 70's feature that sound. It's classic. It seems you don't care for it. To each their own. 

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Yep I practiced in a roomful of these in music college. the distortion actually is caused by the "twangy" sound of the metal bar when struck hard! I know, I had one apart once. amazingly crude design but alot of fun to play-had a kind of "hammer" action with wooden keys. and not all the tines were made exactly the same, so there was definitely a random quality to your playing. Sort of like playing a bunch of tuning forks in a wooden box. i think part of the sound was that the tines would resonate each other a little and added to the sound. so it was a  bit uncontrollable if you were used to a normal acoustic piano. We had the beige wooden ones-I haven't seen any webpics of the exact model in our practice room, but i remember it was pretty crude and definitely not the nice plastic case ones. My TS-12 has a preset called "Supertramp" which is about as good as I'v heard for a digital-minus the wood clunk sound and the random dynamics-the headphones were also pretty crude back then-looked like the ones used on ship radios from WWII-maybe they were!

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  • 3 years later...
  • 1 month later...
On 12/24/2021 at 1:46 AM, Rhodes player said:

I think it is the Wurlitzer only,... right? Someone please confirm....I thought it as it talks about "60s EP" and Wurlitzer was the one to produce such sound at that time. The Rhodes came after 1972 so I think the 60s EP models a Wurlitzer electric piano...right? Someone please confirm

 

Yes, Wurlitzer,  and that info is already posted earlier in this thread. There were actually Rhodes pianos in the 60s as well, but if you heard an EP on a 60s hit, it was likely to be a Wurlitzer (or maybe the similar sounding Hohner Pianet N or other Pianet model of the time). 

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