A Brief History of Rudy Bozak and Bozak, Incorporated
Portions of this article have been extracted from Wikipedia (a public interactive encyclopedic forum) with many facts, errors, and
omissions corrected.
I begin this brief synopsis with feelings of gratitude and appreciation from the many friends and coworkers I was associated with at
Bozak, Inc.
I worked for Rudy Bozak over a span of about 16 years – from 1963 to 1979. During that time, I joined, and rejoined, the company four
times: First in 1963 when Rudy hired me as a college student freshly graduated from Trade School, again after service in the US Army
in Vietnam during the mid-1960s, then again after about 18 months in the field in the mid 1970s after I left to design and install Bozak
Disco systems as my own company, Audio Consultants, and again after another 18 months in 1979 after the company buyout, to
consult for the “new” owners of Bozak, Inc. – Bob Betts
Loudspeakers
Fresh out of college in 1933, Rudy Bozak began working for Allen-Bradley, an electronics manufacturer based in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. Bozak would later employ Allen-Bradley components in his own electronic designs.
Bozak moved to the East Coast in 1935 to work for Cinaudagraph out of Stamford, Connecticut. Two years later he was chief engineer.
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, a tower topped with a cluster of eight 27" Cinaudagraph loudspeakers in 30" frames with huge 450
lb. field coil magnets covered low frequency duties for a 2-way PA system at Flushing Meadows. The loudspeakers were mounted into
horns with 14' wide mouths and were each driven by a 500 watt amplifier derived from a high-power radio broadcast tube. In June,
1940, Electronics magazine published an article that Bozak had written about the design of the 27" loudspeaker.
During World War II, Bozak worked with Lincoln Walsh at Dinion Coil Company in Caledonia, New York developing very high voltage
power supplies for radar.
Bozak joined C. G. Conn in 1944 to help them develop an electronic organ. While in Elkhart, Indiana, he noticed that the human sense
of hearing was unpredictable at best. Years later, Bozak recounted this story about the Conn electronic organ project:
"The general sales manager, who was a pianist and played organ, sat down and played the thing and said it was great, just what we
were looking for. A week later he was invited back into the laboratory and sat down and played the instrument again. He didn't play ten
or fifteen bars when he said, This goddamn thing doesn't sound right. What did you guys do to it?' We said we hadn't done anything.
Well, he didn't believe us. 'You did something to it. You messed it up here,' he said. 'Restore it back to the way you had it.' So what we
did was let the damn instrument sit there for another week, and he comes back and plays it again. 'Now this is the way it should be,' he
says."
In 1948 Bozak moved his family to North Tonawanda, New York to develop organ loudspeakers for Wurlitzer. While there, Bozak
experimented at home in a loudspeaker laboratory he housed in his basement. One design of his featured a kettle drum shell as the
loudspeaker enclosure.
In 1950 Bozak was hired as a consultant by McIntosh Laboratory[4] to develop a square loudspeaker driver unit but it was not an
engineering success. In 1952 he was making driver units for the McIntosh F100 speaker system. Though these sold reasonably well,
McIntosh did not develop the design further. This experience led him to form his own company, Bozak Loudspeakers, in Stamford,
Connecticut.
Bozak met Emory Cook in the early 1950s; the two hit it off and began working in a shared warehouse basement facility in Stamford.
Cook and Bozak thrilled the audio world in 1951 with Cook's ground-breaking stereo recording of train sounds at night: Rail Dynamics.
Together, Bozak and Cook implemented a stereo loudspeaker system that would be able to show Cook's stereo recordings to best
effect.
By the mid-1950s, Bozak had expanded into new quarters at 587 Connecticut Avenue in South Norwalk, with an export office in
Hicksville, New York.
The foundation of Bozak bass loudspeakers unique design was the exclusive Bozak cone. The woofer cone was molded from a slurry
containing paper pulp, lamb's wool, and other ingredients in a secret process. The cone was made thicker at the center, becoming
progressively thinner toward the periphery. An additional doping of lacquer and bakelite at the inner area further strengthened the cone
center. Then the cone was pressed to uniform thickness. The result was a cone with “variable density” – greatest at the center to very
acoustically inert at the rim – which allowed for minimal transmission reflections and therefore virtually no breakup or standing waves,
the major sources of distortion in more conventional paper cones.
The original midrange and tweeter cones were paper. In 1961 the B-209 midrange cone was changed to a radical new design. The
material was 0.006-inch, dead soft, spun aluminum which took much of its strength from its curvilinear profile along the radius. The
cone received a thin coating of latex on both sides, with through-holes for binding the sandwich, in order to dampen the surface
reflections that otherwise would be sustained on a metal surface. The design was patented and was largely responsible for the
superb transient response of the Bozak B-209B and B-209C midrange.
In 1961 the original B-200X paper-cone tweeter re-appeared as the B-200Y, using the same basic cone design of the midrange, but
with paper-thin 0.002 aluminum.
The Concert Grand was the crown jewel of Bozak speaker systems since its introduction in 1951. It was the upper end model of the
“Concert” series of the “systematic growth” program. This refrigerator-sized speaker system originally contained four B-199 12"
woofers, one 8 Ohm B-209 6" midrange driver and eight tweeters. The B-310 and B-310A were the mono versions in which the
tweeters were arranged as a “sector of a sphere” for widest distribution of high frequencies. The “stereo” B-310B and B-410 had the
eight tweeters arranged in a vertical row, to take advantage of the “column effect” which was an ongoing program in the Bozak labs. All
Concert Grand models starting from the B-310A contained two 16 Ohm B-209 midrange drivers. The Concert Grand loudspeakers
were designed to fill large spaces and were not at their best with listeners closer than 20 feet away. In 1965, a pair of B-410 Concert
Grands cost US$2000. Such a high price limited ownership to a small number of hi-fi aficionados and audiophiles. The model line
continued to be manufactured by Bozak until 1977. Henry Mancini and Benny Goodman, good friends of Rudy Bozak, owned Concert
Grand speaker systems. Jack Webb put two pair (four B-410s) in his Mark VII Productions listening room.
In 1961, Bozak introduced the B-4000 Symphony. This was sort of "half a Concert Grand," using two 12" woofers, one midrange and
the same vertical array of eight tweeters as the Concert Grands. It was the top speaker in the “Symphony” series of the “systematic
Growth” program.
The backbone of the Bozak line was the B-302A system, the beginning of the systematic growth program, offered in several cabinet
styles over a period of years. The 302A systems consisted of one 12" woofer, one midrange driver and one tweeter pair. A 'starter'
version, the B-300, was a 2-way system consisting of one 12" woofer and one tweeter pair mounted across the front of the woofer. A
single capacitor sufficed as the crossover 'network' for the B-300. The system could be expanded to a 3-way B-302A by adding a
midrange and full 3-way Bozak crossover.
Acoustic suspension arrived in the loudspeaker marketplace in 1959, making it possible to get the apparent low bass from a small,
bookshelf-sized enclosure. This somewhat affected the sales of "big box" speaker systems of all brands. Rudy Bozak never offered an
acoustic suspension speaker system; he stated that the full transient response and clean bass for which his woofers were famous
could not be obtained with the heavier, gimmicked, reinforced woofer cones necessary for acoustic suspension. Bozak began offering
smaller speaker systems to answer consumer demand. Bookshelf speaker systems from Bozak were never as popular with the
mass market as many of the artificial bass-boost systems were, but the numbers of their limited popularity did warrant a separate
assembly line in the production factory.
In 1963, at 18 years of age, Bob Betts was hired as technician but was put in charge of the Acoustics Lab a few months later – under
Rudy’s watchful eye. Betts became chief engineer in 1968. Bob traveled extensively with Bozak on company business and was tutored
extensively by Rudy to help him with his college homework.
Commercial sound
For commercial sound reinforcement, Bozak introduced a full line of columnar loudspeakers, which included a biamped columnar
loudspeaker in 1964. In 1963, the newly-established commercial loudspeaker division was employing about 60 people dedicated to
manufacturing the columnar models which were proving a great success.
For the 1964 New York World's Fair, Bozak put forward a new loudspeaker design; this time in the Vatican Pavilion. Rudy and Bob
worked tirelessly to develop an omni or hemispherical coverage ceiling-mounted loudspeaker. The result was the 2-way,
hemispherical CM-109-2. These were installed and operated with great success over the course of the fair.
Bozak accepted occasional United States Department of Defense contracts including an underwater low frequency driver intended for
acoustic communication testing, an ultrasonic transducer that was flat to 40 KHz, and a vibration platform that Bozak employees called
"The Shaker" which was meant to test the G-force integrity of electronic assemblies.
The company name changed from "The R.T. Bozak Manufacturing Co." to "Bozak, Inc" in the mid-late 1960s.
Electronics
Power Amplifiers, Mixers, Equalizers, and DJ mixers
Bozak is often remembered today for his advanced designs of DJ mixers which allowed the development of the concept of disc jockey
mixing and 'discotheques', but with exceptional sales to churches, arenas, stadiums, auditoriums, and other public areas. Beginning
with the Bozak CMA-6-1 and CMA-10-1, 6 and 10-input monaural units of the mid 1960s, the peak of development was reached with
the stereo Bozak CMA-10-2DL; a unit that was very quickly accepted as the standard of its day. The Bozak CMA mixers were very
expensive: they used high-grade Allen-Bradley components, hand-selected transistors, and were of modular construction for ease of
servicing and expansion.
C/M Laboratories, co-founded by Wayne Chou, worked with Rudy Bozak on the construction of the predecessor to the DJ mixer. C/M
Labs designed the CMA-10-1 mixer intended for orchestral sound reinforcement; it was produced in small quantities. C/M Labs also
designed and built amplifiers and other integrated electronics for Bozak and used Bozak speakers to test their gear.
Eventually, Bozak brought these electronic products into the Bozak brand and developed them further. The CMA-10-2DL mixer was
designed at Bozak. Bozak set up its own electronics production line, with further developments by Rudy and Bob, to include equalizers,
high power amps, and specialized mixers.
The design of the famed CMA series of mixers was cloned by UREI, until they ceased production at which point the mixer was cloned
by Rane Corp. In 2005, Soundcraft began to offer a UREI-Soundcraft units. The Bozak brand is now owned by Analog Developments
Ltd.
Home Systems
In the mid-1970s, Bob Betts designed the face plates and chassis for a series of home entertainment stereo equipment. These were
to be known as the “900-series” of electronics. The 919 preamp and 929 power amp were great successes, with “black out” esthetics
typical of the day, a la Marantz, McIntosh, etc. Other 900-Series products were developed, to include an economy version of the preamp
and poweramp.
Saul Marantz joined Bozak as consultant in the mid 1970s. He helped with esthetic details of certain products, but mostly served as
sales consultant and good-will emissary. When both Bozak and Marantz teamed up to demonstrate loudspeakers at Hi-Fi events and
audio engineering conventions, a sizable crowd would form. Bozak shifted from using McIntosh amplifiers for powering his
loudspeakers to using his own home entertainment models, late in the 1960s.
One of the last major Bozak projects that Rudy Bozak himself was an integral part of involved a thorough redesign of the B-200Y
tweeter which had been a staple of Bozak loudspeakers since its introduction in 1962. The new design echoed earlier changes to the
B-209/B-800 midrange design philosophy: the standard tweeter cone shape was modified into a curvilinear shape. The new design
became the B-200Z. Its basic curvilinear configuration was settled by Betts in 1974 and put into limited production, but full production
didn't get underway until 1975/1976 where it saw extensive use in the “Monitor-C”, and several of the original “LS” (Lab Standard)
monitors. The new tweeter extended high frequency response to 18,000 Hz.
The Lab Standard systems were especially designed for recording studio mix-down applications and off-air monitors. Each
loudspeaker was shipped with a machine run response curve and exhibited ultra flat response, with very low harmonic, phase, and
inter-modulation distortion. The “LS” would later be corrupted by the new owners to the “Listener Series” of systems – some quite
good, but some not worthy of the Bozak name.
When Rudy Bozak turned 67 in 1977, he offered an opportunity for an employee buy-out headed by Bob Betts, his chief engineer. The
arrangements required the personal loans of several key employees and would take a few months to transact with the company’s
bank. Bozak didn't wait for the employee buy-out; but with a handshake promise to retain certain crucial employees, Rudy sold the
rights to his corporation to an existing venture business. The original employee buyout committee was assured of continued stable
operation of the operation. Bozak stayed on in a minor consulting role and Bob Betts remained as chief engineer.
But things began to change, Quality was seen to go quickly downhill; the new owners appeared to longtime employees as being
interested only in pulling money out of the operation. Betts and other company management officers left the company one by one.
In early 1982, Rudy Bozak died. His wife Lillian and their son-in-law Don Parks reorganized the company and quality of workmanship
made a brief comeback from 1983 to 1985. The facility relocated several times: Newington, Bristol and New Britain but management
was unable to sustain the effort. Finally, the company's assets were put into truck trailers to await final disposition. The company
tooling was sold New England Audio Resource (N.E.A.R.), an audiophile loudspeaker manufacturer based in Lewiston, Maine.
NOTES:
Rudolph Thomas Bozak
* Born: 1910, Uniontown, Pennsylvania
* Died: February 8, 1982
* Residence: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Stamford, Connecticut, Caledonia, New York, Elkhart, Indiana, North Tonawanda, New York,
Buffalo, New York, Darien, CT
* AKA: Rudy Bozak, R. T. Bozak
* Occupation: Engineer, designer, entrepreneur, owner
* Employers: Allen-Bradley, Cinaudagraph, Dinion Coil Company, C. G. Conn, Wurlitzer, The R. T. Bozak Mfg. Co., Bozak, Inc., N.E.A.R.
* Spouse: Lillian Gilleski
* Children: Lillian, Mary and Barbara
Rudolph Thomas Bozak (1910-1982) was an audio electronics and acoustics designer and engineer in the field of sound
reproduction. His parents were Bohemian Czech immigrants; Rudy was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Bozak studied at Milwaukee
School of Engineering; in 1981, the school awarded him an honorary doctorate in engineering.
Recognitions
* In 1938, Bozak was elected to Associate Grade membership with the Institute of Radio Engineers.
* By 1963, Bozak was on the Board of Governors of the Audio Engineering Society for two years.
* He served in the same capacity again for two years starting in 1970.
* Bozak was awarded an AES Fellowship in 1965 for "valuable contributions to the advancement in or dissemination of knowledge of
audio engineering or in the promotion of its application in practice."
* In 1970, Rudy T. Bozak won the AES John H. Potts Award (now the Gold Medal), their highest award for outstanding, sustained
achievement in the field of audio engineering.
Patents
* Switch for electrical musical instruments. US patent 2567870. C.G.Conn Ltd., 1951.
* Metallic diaphragm for electrodynamic loudspeakerss. US patent 3093207. R.T.Bozak Mfg. Co., 1963.
* Compliant annulus for loudspeaker and related circuit. US patent 3436494. R.T.Bozak Mfg. Co., 1969.
* Edge-damped diaphragm for electrodynamic loudspeakers. US patent 3837425. Bozak, Inc., 1973.
Author's Timeline (Bob Betts)
7-63 to 8-65 Acoustics Lab Tech, Draftsman/designer (driver components, wood cabinetry, acoustical development.
8-65 to 7-68 US Army
7-68 to 5-75 Chief Engineer
5-75 to 1-77 Bozak system design and sales (own Business)
1-77 to 7-77 Chief Engineer
7-77 to 1-79 Bozak system design and sales (own Business)
1-79 to 5 79 Chief Engineer
Portions of this article have been extracted from Wikipedia (a public interactive encyclopedic forum) with many facts, errors, and
omissions corrected.
I begin this brief synopsis with feelings of gratitude and appreciation from the many friends and coworkers I was associated with at
Bozak, Inc.
I worked for Rudy Bozak over a span of about 16 years – from 1963 to 1979. During that time, I joined, and rejoined, the company four
times: First in 1963 when Rudy hired me as a college student freshly graduated from Trade School, again after service in the US Army
in Vietnam during the mid-1960s, then again after about 18 months in the field in the mid 1970s after I left to design and install Bozak
Disco systems as my own company, Audio Consultants, and again after another 18 months in 1979 after the company buyout, to
consult for the “new” owners of Bozak, Inc. – Bob Betts
Loudspeakers
Fresh out of college in 1933, Rudy Bozak began working for Allen-Bradley, an electronics manufacturer based in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. Bozak would later employ Allen-Bradley components in his own electronic designs.
Bozak moved to the East Coast in 1935 to work for Cinaudagraph out of Stamford, Connecticut. Two years later he was chief engineer.
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, a tower topped with a cluster of eight 27" Cinaudagraph loudspeakers in 30" frames with huge 450
lb. field coil magnets covered low frequency duties for a 2-way PA system at Flushing Meadows. The loudspeakers were mounted into
horns with 14' wide mouths and were each driven by a 500 watt amplifier derived from a high-power radio broadcast tube. In June,
1940, Electronics magazine published an article that Bozak had written about the design of the 27" loudspeaker.
During World War II, Bozak worked with Lincoln Walsh at Dinion Coil Company in Caledonia, New York developing very high voltage
power supplies for radar.
Bozak joined C. G. Conn in 1944 to help them develop an electronic organ. While in Elkhart, Indiana, he noticed that the human sense
of hearing was unpredictable at best. Years later, Bozak recounted this story about the Conn electronic organ project:
"The general sales manager, who was a pianist and played organ, sat down and played the thing and said it was great, just what we
were looking for. A week later he was invited back into the laboratory and sat down and played the instrument again. He didn't play ten
or fifteen bars when he said, This goddamn thing doesn't sound right. What did you guys do to it?' We said we hadn't done anything.
Well, he didn't believe us. 'You did something to it. You messed it up here,' he said. 'Restore it back to the way you had it.' So what we
did was let the damn instrument sit there for another week, and he comes back and plays it again. 'Now this is the way it should be,' he
says."
In 1948 Bozak moved his family to North Tonawanda, New York to develop organ loudspeakers for Wurlitzer. While there, Bozak
experimented at home in a loudspeaker laboratory he housed in his basement. One design of his featured a kettle drum shell as the
loudspeaker enclosure.
In 1950 Bozak was hired as a consultant by McIntosh Laboratory[4] to develop a square loudspeaker driver unit but it was not an
engineering success. In 1952 he was making driver units for the McIntosh F100 speaker system. Though these sold reasonably well,
McIntosh did not develop the design further. This experience led him to form his own company, Bozak Loudspeakers, in Stamford,
Connecticut.
Bozak met Emory Cook in the early 1950s; the two hit it off and began working in a shared warehouse basement facility in Stamford.
Cook and Bozak thrilled the audio world in 1951 with Cook's ground-breaking stereo recording of train sounds at night: Rail Dynamics.
Together, Bozak and Cook implemented a stereo loudspeaker system that would be able to show Cook's stereo recordings to best
effect.
By the mid-1950s, Bozak had expanded into new quarters at 587 Connecticut Avenue in South Norwalk, with an export office in
Hicksville, New York.
The foundation of Bozak bass loudspeakers unique design was the exclusive Bozak cone. The woofer cone was molded from a slurry
containing paper pulp, lamb's wool, and other ingredients in a secret process. The cone was made thicker at the center, becoming
progressively thinner toward the periphery. An additional doping of lacquer and bakelite at the inner area further strengthened the cone
center. Then the cone was pressed to uniform thickness. The result was a cone with “variable density” – greatest at the center to very
acoustically inert at the rim – which allowed for minimal transmission reflections and therefore virtually no breakup or standing waves,
the major sources of distortion in more conventional paper cones.
The original midrange and tweeter cones were paper. In 1961 the B-209 midrange cone was changed to a radical new design. The
material was 0.006-inch, dead soft, spun aluminum which took much of its strength from its curvilinear profile along the radius. The
cone received a thin coating of latex on both sides, with through-holes for binding the sandwich, in order to dampen the surface
reflections that otherwise would be sustained on a metal surface. The design was patented and was largely responsible for the
superb transient response of the Bozak B-209B and B-209C midrange.
In 1961 the original B-200X paper-cone tweeter re-appeared as the B-200Y, using the same basic cone design of the midrange, but
with paper-thin 0.002 aluminum.
The Concert Grand was the crown jewel of Bozak speaker systems since its introduction in 1951. It was the upper end model of the
“Concert” series of the “systematic growth” program. This refrigerator-sized speaker system originally contained four B-199 12"
woofers, one 8 Ohm B-209 6" midrange driver and eight tweeters. The B-310 and B-310A were the mono versions in which the
tweeters were arranged as a “sector of a sphere” for widest distribution of high frequencies. The “stereo” B-310B and B-410 had the
eight tweeters arranged in a vertical row, to take advantage of the “column effect” which was an ongoing program in the Bozak labs. All
Concert Grand models starting from the B-310A contained two 16 Ohm B-209 midrange drivers. The Concert Grand loudspeakers
were designed to fill large spaces and were not at their best with listeners closer than 20 feet away. In 1965, a pair of B-410 Concert
Grands cost US$2000. Such a high price limited ownership to a small number of hi-fi aficionados and audiophiles. The model line
continued to be manufactured by Bozak until 1977. Henry Mancini and Benny Goodman, good friends of Rudy Bozak, owned Concert
Grand speaker systems. Jack Webb put two pair (four B-410s) in his Mark VII Productions listening room.
In 1961, Bozak introduced the B-4000 Symphony. This was sort of "half a Concert Grand," using two 12" woofers, one midrange and
the same vertical array of eight tweeters as the Concert Grands. It was the top speaker in the “Symphony” series of the “systematic
Growth” program.
The backbone of the Bozak line was the B-302A system, the beginning of the systematic growth program, offered in several cabinet
styles over a period of years. The 302A systems consisted of one 12" woofer, one midrange driver and one tweeter pair. A 'starter'
version, the B-300, was a 2-way system consisting of one 12" woofer and one tweeter pair mounted across the front of the woofer. A
single capacitor sufficed as the crossover 'network' for the B-300. The system could be expanded to a 3-way B-302A by adding a
midrange and full 3-way Bozak crossover.
Acoustic suspension arrived in the loudspeaker marketplace in 1959, making it possible to get the apparent low bass from a small,
bookshelf-sized enclosure. This somewhat affected the sales of "big box" speaker systems of all brands. Rudy Bozak never offered an
acoustic suspension speaker system; he stated that the full transient response and clean bass for which his woofers were famous
could not be obtained with the heavier, gimmicked, reinforced woofer cones necessary for acoustic suspension. Bozak began offering
smaller speaker systems to answer consumer demand. Bookshelf speaker systems from Bozak were never as popular with the
mass market as many of the artificial bass-boost systems were, but the numbers of their limited popularity did warrant a separate
assembly line in the production factory.
In 1963, at 18 years of age, Bob Betts was hired as technician but was put in charge of the Acoustics Lab a few months later – under
Rudy’s watchful eye. Betts became chief engineer in 1968. Bob traveled extensively with Bozak on company business and was tutored
extensively by Rudy to help him with his college homework.
Commercial sound
For commercial sound reinforcement, Bozak introduced a full line of columnar loudspeakers, which included a biamped columnar
loudspeaker in 1964. In 1963, the newly-established commercial loudspeaker division was employing about 60 people dedicated to
manufacturing the columnar models which were proving a great success.
For the 1964 New York World's Fair, Bozak put forward a new loudspeaker design; this time in the Vatican Pavilion. Rudy and Bob
worked tirelessly to develop an omni or hemispherical coverage ceiling-mounted loudspeaker. The result was the 2-way,
hemispherical CM-109-2. These were installed and operated with great success over the course of the fair.
Bozak accepted occasional United States Department of Defense contracts including an underwater low frequency driver intended for
acoustic communication testing, an ultrasonic transducer that was flat to 40 KHz, and a vibration platform that Bozak employees called
"The Shaker" which was meant to test the G-force integrity of electronic assemblies.
The company name changed from "The R.T. Bozak Manufacturing Co." to "Bozak, Inc" in the mid-late 1960s.
Electronics
Power Amplifiers, Mixers, Equalizers, and DJ mixers
Bozak is often remembered today for his advanced designs of DJ mixers which allowed the development of the concept of disc jockey
mixing and 'discotheques', but with exceptional sales to churches, arenas, stadiums, auditoriums, and other public areas. Beginning
with the Bozak CMA-6-1 and CMA-10-1, 6 and 10-input monaural units of the mid 1960s, the peak of development was reached with
the stereo Bozak CMA-10-2DL; a unit that was very quickly accepted as the standard of its day. The Bozak CMA mixers were very
expensive: they used high-grade Allen-Bradley components, hand-selected transistors, and were of modular construction for ease of
servicing and expansion.
C/M Laboratories, co-founded by Wayne Chou, worked with Rudy Bozak on the construction of the predecessor to the DJ mixer. C/M
Labs designed the CMA-10-1 mixer intended for orchestral sound reinforcement; it was produced in small quantities. C/M Labs also
designed and built amplifiers and other integrated electronics for Bozak and used Bozak speakers to test their gear.
Eventually, Bozak brought these electronic products into the Bozak brand and developed them further. The CMA-10-2DL mixer was
designed at Bozak. Bozak set up its own electronics production line, with further developments by Rudy and Bob, to include equalizers,
high power amps, and specialized mixers.
The design of the famed CMA series of mixers was cloned by UREI, until they ceased production at which point the mixer was cloned
by Rane Corp. In 2005, Soundcraft began to offer a UREI-Soundcraft units. The Bozak brand is now owned by Analog Developments
Ltd.
Home Systems
In the mid-1970s, Bob Betts designed the face plates and chassis for a series of home entertainment stereo equipment. These were
to be known as the “900-series” of electronics. The 919 preamp and 929 power amp were great successes, with “black out” esthetics
typical of the day, a la Marantz, McIntosh, etc. Other 900-Series products were developed, to include an economy version of the preamp
and poweramp.
Saul Marantz joined Bozak as consultant in the mid 1970s. He helped with esthetic details of certain products, but mostly served as
sales consultant and good-will emissary. When both Bozak and Marantz teamed up to demonstrate loudspeakers at Hi-Fi events and
audio engineering conventions, a sizable crowd would form. Bozak shifted from using McIntosh amplifiers for powering his
loudspeakers to using his own home entertainment models, late in the 1960s.
One of the last major Bozak projects that Rudy Bozak himself was an integral part of involved a thorough redesign of the B-200Y
tweeter which had been a staple of Bozak loudspeakers since its introduction in 1962. The new design echoed earlier changes to the
B-209/B-800 midrange design philosophy: the standard tweeter cone shape was modified into a curvilinear shape. The new design
became the B-200Z. Its basic curvilinear configuration was settled by Betts in 1974 and put into limited production, but full production
didn't get underway until 1975/1976 where it saw extensive use in the “Monitor-C”, and several of the original “LS” (Lab Standard)
monitors. The new tweeter extended high frequency response to 18,000 Hz.
The Lab Standard systems were especially designed for recording studio mix-down applications and off-air monitors. Each
loudspeaker was shipped with a machine run response curve and exhibited ultra flat response, with very low harmonic, phase, and
inter-modulation distortion. The “LS” would later be corrupted by the new owners to the “Listener Series” of systems – some quite
good, but some not worthy of the Bozak name.
When Rudy Bozak turned 67 in 1977, he offered an opportunity for an employee buy-out headed by Bob Betts, his chief engineer. The
arrangements required the personal loans of several key employees and would take a few months to transact with the company’s
bank. Bozak didn't wait for the employee buy-out; but with a handshake promise to retain certain crucial employees, Rudy sold the
rights to his corporation to an existing venture business. The original employee buyout committee was assured of continued stable
operation of the operation. Bozak stayed on in a minor consulting role and Bob Betts remained as chief engineer.
But things began to change, Quality was seen to go quickly downhill; the new owners appeared to longtime employees as being
interested only in pulling money out of the operation. Betts and other company management officers left the company one by one.
In early 1982, Rudy Bozak died. His wife Lillian and their son-in-law Don Parks reorganized the company and quality of workmanship
made a brief comeback from 1983 to 1985. The facility relocated several times: Newington, Bristol and New Britain but management
was unable to sustain the effort. Finally, the company's assets were put into truck trailers to await final disposition. The company
tooling was sold New England Audio Resource (N.E.A.R.), an audiophile loudspeaker manufacturer based in Lewiston, Maine.
NOTES:
Rudolph Thomas Bozak
* Born: 1910, Uniontown, Pennsylvania
* Died: February 8, 1982
* Residence: Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Stamford, Connecticut, Caledonia, New York, Elkhart, Indiana, North Tonawanda, New York,
Buffalo, New York, Darien, CT
* AKA: Rudy Bozak, R. T. Bozak
* Occupation: Engineer, designer, entrepreneur, owner
* Employers: Allen-Bradley, Cinaudagraph, Dinion Coil Company, C. G. Conn, Wurlitzer, The R. T. Bozak Mfg. Co., Bozak, Inc., N.E.A.R.
* Spouse: Lillian Gilleski
* Children: Lillian, Mary and Barbara
Rudolph Thomas Bozak (1910-1982) was an audio electronics and acoustics designer and engineer in the field of sound
reproduction. His parents were Bohemian Czech immigrants; Rudy was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Bozak studied at Milwaukee
School of Engineering; in 1981, the school awarded him an honorary doctorate in engineering.
Recognitions
* In 1938, Bozak was elected to Associate Grade membership with the Institute of Radio Engineers.
* By 1963, Bozak was on the Board of Governors of the Audio Engineering Society for two years.
* He served in the same capacity again for two years starting in 1970.
* Bozak was awarded an AES Fellowship in 1965 for "valuable contributions to the advancement in or dissemination of knowledge of
audio engineering or in the promotion of its application in practice."
* In 1970, Rudy T. Bozak won the AES John H. Potts Award (now the Gold Medal), their highest award for outstanding, sustained
achievement in the field of audio engineering.
Patents
* Switch for electrical musical instruments. US patent 2567870. C.G.Conn Ltd., 1951.
* Metallic diaphragm for electrodynamic loudspeakerss. US patent 3093207. R.T.Bozak Mfg. Co., 1963.
* Compliant annulus for loudspeaker and related circuit. US patent 3436494. R.T.Bozak Mfg. Co., 1969.
* Edge-damped diaphragm for electrodynamic loudspeakers. US patent 3837425. Bozak, Inc., 1973.
Author's Timeline (Bob Betts)
7-63 to 8-65 Acoustics Lab Tech, Draftsman/designer (driver components, wood cabinetry, acoustical development.
8-65 to 7-68 US Army
7-68 to 5-75 Chief Engineer
5-75 to 1-77 Bozak system design and sales (own Business)
1-77 to 7-77 Chief Engineer
7-77 to 1-79 Bozak system design and sales (own Business)
1-79 to 5 79 Chief Engineer
Bozak History
The Man, the Company
