The early models used the Wurlitzer Spectratone speaker, but switched over to the Leslie speaker in 1974 with the model 555. And lurking beneath the three manuals is a real life rotating speaker cabinet. Cheesy drum beats, the usual home organ sounds, and a cassette player/recorder round out the features of the organs that typically contain an Orbit III. The rest of the instrument the Orbit III is attached to is classic home organ fare. The sound of the synth is modified by a row of organ-style buttons that affect the timbre and the range. Each synthesis function can be completely toggled on and off via push button. The 'second touch' feature is a crude aftertouch function, which you can assign to affect either the LFO or the 'slide' function. The LFO has settings for rate and 'deviation' (depth). It has a basic envelope that includes attack and sustain, a filter of sorts (called 'wah-wah' - guess what kind of sound it makes), and an LFO (called 'modulator' in Wurlitzer parlance).

It was included as the third manual on many different Wurlitzer home organ models since its introduction in 1971 (models 4037, 4373, 4573, 555 and others). The Orbit III is an unusual, but not at all rare, basic monophonic synthesizer.