A collection of wurlitzer co. factory documentation

When the Wurlitzer factory in Corinth, MS, closed in the mid-1980s, a Wurlitzer engineer named Mark Morelock acquired all of the spare parts and engineering drawings. For the next 35 or so years, Morelock’s Organ Service sold parts and provided technical information to electronic piano and organ technicians.

When Morelock’s closed in 2022, the building and everything inside was sold, and the new owners planned to liquidate its contents. Although the new owners were ambivalent about selling any part of the collection, they agreed to allow us to come by and purchase parts. We drove 1,000 miles and arrived two days before a cleaning crew was scheduled to dispose of everything in the building.

Although we had purchased parts from Morelock’s, we did not know that Mark Morelock had been maintaining such a comprehensive and highly-organized inventory. We found shelves stacks to the ceiling with organ foot pedal assemblies, NOS printed circuit boards, transformers, stop tablets, and just about every other component found in an organ. We tried to find a way to save the parts, but we could not come to an agreement with the new owners.

However, we also discovered thirteen filing cabinets filled with engineering drawings, purchase information, test procedures, quality control documentation, and correspondence from the Corinth factory. There are as many as 75,000 pages in the collection. We were able to purchase the contents of the filing cabinets. We spent two weeks transferring the documents to storage. A few months later, we returned to Mississippi a second time with a van in order to drive them to New York.

Technical drawing for Wurlitzer electronic piano carton
Technical drawing for Wurlitzer electronic piano decal

Digitizing the wurlitzer factory records

Some of our favorite pages

The documents contain dimensions, material composition, and other specifications for the parts found in Wurlitzer electronic pianos and organs. As a record of an important American manufacturer, it is historically valuable and provides a rare picture of factory operations. It also has immense practical value for technicians and musicians who are using Wurlitzer instruments.

The drawings contain information that we’d never dreamed that we’d ever find out. If they are made accessible for research, Wurlitzer organ and electronic piano can be repaired again and again, indefinitely, and music can continue to be made with these iconic instruments.

To ensure that other people can enjoy the Wurlitzer factory documents, we are digitizing the collection. To learn more and to view digitized documents, visit Tropical Fish Archive.

If you are new to the collection, it can be overwhelming. There are thousands upon thousands of drawings. Some drawings are of recognizable parts like headsets and transistors; other drawings are more obscure.

The Archive website intends to provide as much context as we can, so that people can dive in and enjoy the documents. We have been creating individual pages to list specifications for instruments, making it easier to understand what each model of organ and electronic piano had to offer.

Some of the most interesting or complete pages on the website include: