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Beat the Bozak 302 horse

immrridout

New Member
I just bought a pair of Bozak speakers. They have no markings at all so I am going by pictures online to determine determine what they are. I believe they are 302 Century. They were covered in Formica, which when I peeled it off revealed 3/4" fir plywood. Even the backs are plywood. They have a 12" woofer with tweeters and a paper midrange above. There is no lip of the sides and top extending beyond the front board. In fact, that front board is attached over the sides and top so that the raw plywood edge is visible on the sides and top. Surely they would have covered that with veneer or something to mask that raw edge. I know little about the different models and versions of the 302. I wondered if it might have been wrapped all the way around with fabric. I assume this is an early one because of the paper cone midrange and tweeters. I will probably do something cosmetic with the cabinets, but I don't think I will spend big money to replace the midrange or tweeters. I get the impression on here that they are just so so unless you do upgrades. Is there some magic I can do with the batting and crossovers that makes a significant improvement while keeping the paper cones? I would like to makes contact with Tobin concerning his mods. Thanks for now, I will add some pics soon. Mick
 
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Hey Mick,. Cool! Tough to know at the moment if you got factory or diy cabinets and/or parts. Until I know exactly what I'm dealing with, I can't put together a plan of action. But I think we can probably put something together for a minimal amount of money that doesn't totally suck. Plus I can give you options. Your paper mids aren't the best, but we can use them. Start looking for 8" plastic flower pots to put over the backs to seal them. Gonna need pics of your crossovers, batting, all the things. Get to work!

Biggles
 
I can't be sure about the mid cones. Plain B209 should be paper, but someone tell me. And please bare with me. This is the first time I've uploaded pic here. Hope I did it right. Mick
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Hey Mick, you did great. We can work with this. You've got all 1950s parts in a DIY cabinet, which is totally okay. We can get it all properly updated with some effort, and I'll be as gentle on your bank account as I can. Am at work right now, will be back later when I have a proper keyboard.

Biggles
 
Mick,

What you have are the 1950's/early B199 woofers. They have the same tone and sound signature as the later woofers. But they can't take the power, so be judicious with the volume knob. And as you suspected, you have the early paper cone midrange. While it's not quite the performer of its later cousin, it's still a decent driver. It's the tweeters that are going to be your weak link in your system. So we'll just do our best. If you could source a set of the later B200Y tweeters with the aluminum cones, that'd be spiffy.

The following steps are non-optional. These steps will add a magical tone and experience to your Bozak system, this is why you drug this home. And even with your compromised tweeters and paper cone mids, you can really jack up your listening experience. But only if you follow these instructions. Remove the fiberglass and toss it. Line the cabinets with 2" thick 100% cotton upholstery batting. I recently found mine for a project on Amazon, it's also found locally at stores where they sell cloth and upholstery supplies. Fiberglass and that cotton blue jean insulation are acoustic brakes. What that means is all it's doing is making your cabinet smaller. And you can actually hear the backwave of your woofers going thud into the fiberglass. This becomes apparent when you can A/B with a properly prepared cabinet, you can actually hear the difference. It's remarkable. The cabinet with the cotton has a deeper, tuneful thrum. It's a lot like an instrument might have, it's really quite beautiful. Fiberglass? Thud thud thud. You also must fashion a swinging curtain inside your cabinet. This curtain is hung from the top, stretches from right to left and is mounted about halfway from front to back Google images will have some pictures for you. Also look up the word scrim. Using 3M spray adhesive, affix the cotton to the walls of your cabinet, to the back cover of the cabinet, and the scrim to your curtain. Cut 2" square cardboard pieces and use a big stapler to affix the cardboard pieces spaced out over the cotton as a mechanical fastener here and there to help hold up the cotton. All this is just as important as new caps for your crossover.

8" plastic flower pot over the back of your mids, lined and covered with the cotton. This will make your mids far more coherent, clean in their performance. Cheap upgrade.

Replace cap for cap in your crossover to make it easy on yourself. But I'd bet your tweeters have an 8uF cap and your mid uses a 25uF cap. Pat Tobin's work doesn't apply to you, his stuff was for the later aluminum cone drivers. Not for you. No big deal anyway, we don't use his tweeter circuit anymore anyway.

I've attached a picture of a current project of mine. Notice the upholstery batting? Do that. Since mine is an Altec, no curtain. But you get the idea.

Biggles
 

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Thoughts about finish. This is just a suggestion, something you may want to try. On more than 3 or 4 occasions I've had similar speaker cabinets made out of plywood. We think, Hey, it's lousy plywood, I'm going to need to put veneer or wrap it in cloth or something. What we forget is that plywood is wood. And 70 year old plywood is 70 year old wood. I suggest taking a finishing sander and taking down a side of your cabinet with 150 grit until even. Grab some solvent, mineral spirits or lacquer thinner and pour some on. I'd be willing to bet you the plywood turns this amazing deep, dark, rich, brown. It may be worth at least taking a look to see anyway. Those speakers tell a story the way they are, it'd be a shame to cover them up. Be proud!

Biggles
 
Should I take a piece of cotton batting and run the sewing machine over it to make sort of a quilted panel. That would also make it non stretchy. Maybe a selvage edge? The edges maybe an inch away from all batting on the sides, top and bottom?
 
Hanging curtain made of what? Distance from top, bottom and sides?
Make it out of the cotton batting. Use the scrim to add structure to it. By itself it's not enough to hold together, kinda flimsy. Your idea of running the sewing machine over it is good, but the cotton might be too thick. Your measurements are good. About an inch away from everything, you want it free swinging. This is Rudys secret weapon, or at least a unique weapon. It tricks the woofer into thinking it's in a much larger cabinet. Plus the cotton allows the backwaves to dissipate in the cabinet. If you leave a cabinet with fiberglass only and do a A/B test yourself, the difference is remarkable.

Biggles
 
So, unless I replace the mids and tweeters, all I can really expect is mediocre speakers?

Is it a no go to make crossover changes with the paper cones and use them that way until I come across some b200y's?

If no one uses the Tobin mods anymore, then do they just leave 302's stock or are there new and different mods?

What would acoustic foam panels do instead of cotton?

After reading up for a couple of days, I never read anyone's account of an internal curtain or using cotton batting. Are these things so understood that people take it for granted that it's the right thing.

I guess the 302's are more of a dead horse than I realized. I thought there might be more input about them.
 
I'm a little surprised by the construction. It is much better than I usually see with DIY. BTW, it turns out that the top is hardwood plywood. Probably Birch. The rest is fir. Fir is really soft, it is always fuzzy no matter how much you sand it and it never gives a good finish. I will definitely cover it, either with veneer or fabricIMG_1284 Medium.jpegIMG_1285 Medium.jpeg
 
So, unless I replace the mids and tweeters, all I can really expect is mediocre speakers?

Is it a no go to make crossover changes with the paper cones and use them that way until I come across some b200y's?

If no one uses the Tobin mods anymore, then do they just leave 302's stock or are there new and different mods?

What would acoustic foam panels do instead of cotton?

After reading up for a couple of days, I never read anyone's account of an internal curtain or using cotton batting. Are these things so understood that people take it for granted that it's the right thing.

I guess the 302's are more of a dead horse than I realized. I thought there might be more input about them.

You need to reread what I wrote, no where did I use the word mediocre.

You may change the crossovers at any time, it's up to you. But the Tobin schematic was designed for the 200Ys.

The B200Y doesn't have linear output. Meaning at .5 watt it is very low, and you can barely hear it. While at 20 watts it finally gets louder. With the Tobin schematic, you cannot hear the tweeters at low level. But if you pull out the tweeter schematic and just use an 8uF cap with an L-pad, you can adjust the level and you're finally able to hear the tweeters at low levels!!!!!! It's a great mod.

There's over 70 years of details about Rudy's work on the swinging curtain and his batting on the net. I've been on Audiokarma with AK member Retrovert talking exhaustively about cotton batting, swinging curtains in regard to Bozaks. So much so members are bored out of their skulls listening to us. If you can't find us? You're not looking hard enough. The following took me less then fifteen seconds to find.

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/bozak-curtain-options.835200/#post-11905072

The sheer volume of information on AK about them could fill a stadium. I've spent half my posting here about Bozaks.

Biggles
 
If I decide to look for tweeters, must they be 8 ohm?

You can buy and use any tweeters you like. I've tried and used quite a few myself. Tweeters are a freaking pain in the ass to integrate into a system. If you want an outstanding, drop-in replacement modern tweeter, the Morel CAT408 is the one you're looking for. A gentleman over at the Bozak Facebook group did the engineering and figured that one out. He and his team did the research and engineering. The FB Bozak group runs 24/7 and has documentation to download as well.

Your cabinets are built better than factory cabinets, which is common. And welcome.

I don't know how Bozaks will handle the foam panels instead of cotton. Does the foam have loft like the cotton does? It needs to have nice soft places for the backwaves to dissipate into.

Biggles
 
Here's a thread with TONS and TONS of information.

 
I guess the prosecution rests:
Here is my experience


I think a 302 should have a curtain of insulation
 
Curtain is discussed by Retrovert. This is before we moved on from Tobins schematic.

 
Batting is discussed.

 
OK. I looked, but I don’t know why this stuff didn’t come up for me. I guess I just didn’t know what to search for. I thought of using a piece of foam core snd stitch the cotton batting to it on both sides. But does the curtain need to be wavable like a flag or can it be rigid? I also thought of sandwiching cotton batting between two pieces of a soft flexible netting and stitch it through every couple of inches. Do you suppose that it will actually flap around inside the cabinet as though it is windy in there?
 
Hey, the curtain does need to be able move a bit, a bit. You don't want to take up too much volume. The netting sounds cool. I'd put the cotton towards the driver, netting on the back and call it a day. It won't be windy, unless you're pushing Rammstein at 25 watts. But yeah, the curtain will move around.

Biggles
 
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