Any jukebox experts? I could use your insights as I work to repair this 1970’s era Wurlitzer Americana jukebox. The Wurlitzer family started buying and selling musical items in Saxony as far back as 1659. Rudolph Wurlitzer came to the United States in 1853 and started an import business selling instruments to the U.S. government during the Civil War. Soon he became the largest instrument supplier in America and through a chain of retail stores in Chicago he started marketing a line of pianos which he manufactured. It wasn’t long before Rudolph attached a coin slot to a player piano and literally started the coin-operated music boom of the late 1800s.
Operators in the early 1950s considered the new Wurlitzer mechanisms overly complex and not particularly reliable. After nearly giving up on jukeboxes in the early ’60s and early ’70s, Wurlitzer gave one last gasp in 1973 and tried to make a nostalgic-looking jukebox called the “1050”. With only 1,600 units produced, the effort wasn’t enough to bring back what was once the greatest jukebox manufacturer ever. Wurlitzer held on into the ’70s but then when demand for jukeboxes faded, so did the Wurlitzer factory, eventually going out of business in 1974. The jukebox brand and trade-marks were sold to Wurlitzers own German subsiderary: Deutsche Wurlitzer GmbH.
