I inherited a Wurlitzer Electric Piano 140A. When I first plugged the piano in and turned it on I heard a pop and saw a small puff of smoke. I immediately turned the power off. The power cord that came with the piano was a frayed but I thought it might  still work. That was a mistake. After connecting the piano with a known good power cable nothing happened at all when I turned the piano on, no sound, nothing.

I searched the Internet for help and found a website https://www.tropicalfishvintage.com/ which advertised rebuild kits for Wurlitzer amplifiers.

I sent my Wurly amp to https://www.tropicalfishvintage.com/ to have it rebuilt since I don’t have the technical expertise. Jon Borducci from there notified me that the varistors were damaged and it wouldn’t be possible to get it working unless I was willing to wait and indeterminate amount of weeks for the rebuild. He said he had a good working amp and would send that to me for the same price as rebuilding mine. The price was $700. 

Since I didn’t feel like waiting for weeks or months. I paid him the $700 and he sent me the amp.

When I received the amp the two pots on the wire harness were frozen. Luckily, after spraying the pots with Deoxit the pots loosened up. I put the amp in the piano and it was noisy beyond belief. I didn’t think I could use the piano for anything except to look at it. The internal speaker didn’t work either. It also came without a headphone jack which I knew about but didn’t think that would be a big deal. When I asked him to return the amp, he ended up hanging up the phone on me, saying talking to me was a waste of time. 

Then I asked  for my amp back and he said since he had started rebuilding it that I couldn’t get it back without sending him another amp as a core, like what they do for auto parts.

He said he would refund me $100 if I sent the amp back to him He said he could sell the that amp for $1000.00. That’s how good it was.

I ended up sending the Jon Borducci amp to Vintage Vibe, https://www.vintagevibe.com/ after having a very pleasant conversation. They were extremely friendly and professional, easy to talk to and knowledgeable. They were willing to take a look at the Borducci amp and see what they could do. They were completely understanding and empathetic to my situation. I think they felt sorry for me and what had happened and I believe they did what they could to keep the repair costs down.

They found quite a few issues with the amp including having to replace the power supply. They had to replace one of Germanium transistors with a silicone transistor which they said would help keep the noise down. They also put a line out in the piano too which I wanted in the first place. Jon Borducci completely did not understand why I would want a line out in this piano and questioned my professionalism, making disparaging remarks. They also put a headphone jack on the wire harness which helps keep the vintage integrity alive by not having an empty hole in the front panel of the piano. They also got the internal speaker working. The problem was that on the Borducci amp when you plug headphones into the headphone jack it disables the internal speaker. Makes sense but when Jon or whoever removed the headphone jack they did not rewire it correctly in the amp and the internal speaker was disabled at the same time. And they are sending me an extra braided wire to assist in grounding the pickup to further cut down on the inherent noise of this amp.

Vintage Vibe are total pros and super nice people too, extremely knowledgeable. They charging me around $600.00 to repair what Jon Borducci called a $1,000.00 amplifier. Jon won’t return my old amp because he says he already started rebuilding it after leading me to believe that it was basically unrepairable, not worth the trouble, and persuading me to buy his known good amplifier. I wasn’t about to let them hold my $700 for what Jon would probably be weeks before they could find the right parts.

I was ripped off by Tropical Fish Vintage. Beware. Go with the Pros. Go Vintage Vibe. Take a look at their offerings https://www.vintagevibe.com/. You won’t be disappointed.

Even though Tropical Fish Vintage is a ripoff I’m glad the Vintage Vibe people prevented a total loss with their good help.

Thank you to Vintage Vibe for giving me a happy ending.