Rudy Bozak

134

Rudy Bozak : biography

1910 – February 8, 1982

The last Bozak project 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 midrange: the standard tweeter cone shape was modified into a dished open horn shape that flattened out gradually from the center to the periphery. The new design became the B-200Z. Its basic curvilinear configuration was settled in 1974 but production didn’t get underway until 1976 and early 1977. The new tweeter extended high frequency response to 16,000 Hz.

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. Bozak didn’t wait for an employee buy-out; with a handshake promise to retain certain crucial employees, Rudy sold the rights to his corporation to an existing business headed by Joseph Schlig. Bozak stayed on in a minor consulting role. 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.

Still, several good loudspeaker designs came out of a new engineering effort. In 1975, Bruce Zayde was hired by Bozak and Schlig as technical director; he began by implementing computer-aided design (CAD) as a tool, hosted on an HP 9800 running a COMTRAN program developed by Deane Jensen. Zayde introduced Thiele/Small design principles regarding system development so that loudspeakers could be optimized at the outset for any proposed configuration. The LS-300 became the first Bozak loudspeaker model to be produced wholly from a preconceived design goal. It was also the first Bozak loudspeaker with reflex ports. It was positively reviewed in April, 1979, in High Fidelity.

Rudy Bozak was not in favor of using ports or vents to tune loudspeaker enclosures for greater low-frequency output from a smaller box. He was a purist; he felt that the impulse and transient response of ported designs was inferior and that the augmented bass was too boomy. By the late 1970s, this stance was considered old fashioned; the greater majority of home and professional loudspeakers were using ported designs. As the first ported loudspeaker model was being prototyped at his former company, Rudy Bozak remained skeptical but was willing to stand back and observe the results achieved using the new scientific design methods.

In 1976, Peter Ledermann was hired as assistant to Bruce Zayde but on his second day was thrust into the role of Director of Engineering; Zayde was quitting. Ledermann spent the next two years re-engineering the complete electronic product line, including putting into production the 902, a bucket-brigade based rear channel delay unit. His efforts put Bozak once again into the position of being able to produce and service electronic products reliably and repeatedly. Later, working with Richard Majestic, for whom Ledermann worked previously at RAM Audio, the two men designed the new Listener series, the LS-200A, 220-A, 330-A and others, employing a soft dome tweeter for the first time, as the Bozak tweeter did not have the top end range extension needed to attract the changing marketplace.

Ledermann relates how Rudy Bozak himself was treated by Bozak’s management: "…the new owners of the company relegated him to a dark, unlit corner of the upper floor of the production building near the bundles of stocked cotton wool acoustic stuffing. At the right time of afternoon, when the light streamed in from one of the few windows, you could see the air filled with particulate matter and through it, if you knew where to look, a small, round faced man with felt cap could be usually found sitting in the dark at his old desk with the one small lamp illuminating his face." In 1979, Ledermann designed the Bozak MB80 bookshelf speaker and brought it to the marketplace. This compact loudspeaker contained a soft dome tweeter, a 6" 209-W wide range aluminum driver designed by Ledermann, and a modified first order crossover. The MB-80 employed tweeter clipping protection and indication. Rudy Bozak took note of the project, but did not participate in the design.