Hello MMD from sunny Florida!  I just bought a Wurlitzer Casino player
piano.  When I got the call from a lady wanting to sell a Wurlitzer
player, I assumed it was of the 1203 type.  However, she said that it
was bought new in 1989 up north.  Well, we all 'know' that no such
instrument was built.

When I got to the home to look at the piano, I was very surprised to
see before me what looked just like an Aeolian player piano from the
late 1970's.  It had stained glass panels with lights behind them on
each side of the front panel and could have been a 'Sting' or 'Cabaret'
in cabinet style, except the name plate said Wurlitzer in small letters
beneath a large name "Casino".  The oak case had a strange color of a
somewhat reddish tint to it.

Wurlitzer is cast in the upper right corner of the plate and it has the
well known Wurlitzer piano action and keys.  The player action is the
standard Aeolian found in all of the players from the 1960s and '70s,
but all of the cloth and tubing is very soft and new looking.

Then I remembered that after Aeolian's Memphis plant closed in the
early 1980s, the player division was moved to the Wurlitzer plant in
Holly Springs, MS.  All of the unfinished players were completed by
Wurlitzer and that is how Chickering passed through Wurlitzer on to
Baldwin when the Wurlitzer plant closed down, but that's another story.

Back in the mid 1980s I serviced several new Cable players for a dealer
in St. Petersburg, Florida, that came from the Wurlitzer plant, and
found all kinds of problems.  The worst was the failure to understand
the purpose of the nipple block intended to be parted in order to clean
the tracking system.  I found them firmly glued together in several of
the Aeolian players that were finished in the Wurlitzer plant.  I just
assumed no other players were made, but as we all know assumptions
usually are not right.

The Texas connection is probably a store location where the piano was
purchased as I am unfamiliar with any player piano production by
Wurlitzer in that state.  But that doesn't mean anything as I used to
'know' that Wurlitzer never made a player piano with their name on it
in the 1990's.

Today the "Casino" player was delivered to new owners and they are
very pleased with it.  This piano stayed in the store only three weeks
before someone fell in love with it and took it home.  There is still
interest in the roll players here in Florida!

Ferdinand Pointer - The Piano Company
Clearwater, Florida