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Bozak B302A Econowaves

Andyman

Andyman

Scroungus Stereophilus
Subscriber
Well, i just lost a whole thread here, but the long and short of it right now is that I've roughed in a Bozak B302A econowave system that sounds good enough to pursue further.

The quick story is that the Tobinized B302As didn't do it for me vis' a vis the Altec A7s, but the bass was intriguing. Googling up some info found that they had been Ewaved by others and since I had spares laying about from my LE14 project, I decided to roll them in.

As it stands right now, they are more to my liking than the Tobinized version was, but do need some crossover tweaking. If they can supplant the A7s is another story, but right now they're interesting enough to dig deeper into.

BTW, that's a Pyle PH-715 horn and a Dayton D250P polyamide compression driver that were earmarked for a JBL L60 Ewave project.

Here's a pic.

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Listening for an hour to mono FM was pretty enjoyable. The compression driver really gives it the air and clarity I was missing in the B302As.

I'm definitely going to have to dig up the right coil and cap to move woofer crossover point up to 1200 Hz from 900 hZ, and do up both cabs, but the output is surprisingly flat on my smartphone RTA app...

This could be a winner :D
 
Brian said:
And sad day in Bozak land.
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wsissons said:
Brutal........................
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Why?

Despite the love here for them, they didn't do it for me at all. I tried the Tobin mods and to me it toned them down too much where the bass was overpowering and the top end lacked air and clarity. I rolled them in 3 different SS units and a tube unit and none of them came close to the sweetness of the Altecs. 5 minutes after switching the Altecs back in I knew the B302As were past tense. I put a LOT of effort into these guys; check my posts here and you'll see this isn't something done cavalierly.

Now I may wind up keeping the cabs and woofers and parting out the drivers to folks who want to add a metal mid or tweeters to their system.
 
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Don't feel bad. I don't like my Bozak B401's either, and I get more or less the same response when I've expressed my opinions of them. I believe my 401's have the same driver complement as the 302, but my tweeters are mounted up high instead of centered in the woofer.

As far as I'm concerned, they are yours to do with as you see fit.
 
While this may not really relate to your post in any way shape or form I can appreciate the DIY in you. I know I am relatively new to this website and don't know people's pasts, likes, dislikes, or any of the sorts..... This reminds me of a time when I purchased those Transmission line cabinets for the fostex drivers from madisound that you had to build yourself. At the time they were 99.00 a pair but I think they doubled in price now. Regardless I tried many a woofer/tweeter combination. Finally hit a home run with a pair of Dynaudio midbasses paired with an Altec uhhh... Think it was a newer version of the 802 which maybe was the 902. Either way for a 6 1/2 midbass and a horn driver from vastly different upbringings the sound was incredible. It's probably punishable by law to see a dynaudio woofer paired with an altec horn, LOL but hey, I managed to get it to my liking. :) As one expected I needed an L-pad BAD.

I never did get anywhere with the project, it was more of a spur of the moment thing but man, did those things sound fantastic.

Have you tried an Altec driver? I don't want to throw a wrench in the entire operation for you, just a thought. I always did fancy altecs drivers.

Sorry my post provided ZERO input, just that I am intrigued :)
 
Windir5 said:
While this may not really relate to your post in any way shape or form I can appreciate the DIY in you. I know I am relatively new to this website and don't know people's pasts, likes, dislikes, or any of the sorts..... This reminds me of a time when I purchased those Transmission line cabinets for the fostex drivers from madisound that you had to build yourself. At the time they were 99.00 a pair but I think they doubled in price now. Regardless I tried many a woofer/tweeter combination. Finally hit a home run with a pair of Dynaudio midbasses paired with an Altec uhhh... Think it was a newer version of the 802 which maybe was the 902. Either way for a 6 1/2 midbass and a horn driver from vastly different upbringings the sound was incredible. It's probably punishable by law to see a dynaudio woofer paired with an altec horn, LOL but hey, I managed to get it to my liking. :) As one expected I needed an L-pad BAD.

I never did get anywhere with the project, it was more of a spur of the moment thing but man, did those things sound fantastic.

Have you tried an Altec driver? I don't want to throw a wrench in the entire operation for you, just a thought. I always did fancy altecs drivers.

Sorry my post provided ZERO input, just that I am intrigued :)
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Thanks for the support!

Actually, there's less heresy or DIY here than one might think as the Econowave projects is a huge thing here. I'll link it to at the bottom, but it's a thread with almost 16,000 posts and over 3 million views and some VERY well documented testing on using compression drivers and constant directivity horns as top ends in two way systems. This isn't me tossing a bunch of mismatched parts together based on whim, but grafting a tried and tested top end onto a woofer in a cabinet with some phenomenal bass response. Heck, Pat Tobin himself pretty much nailed this when I found his post over at SHF indicating that the B199A is good up to 4500 hz...:yes:

"The B-199A's roll off at 4,500 Hz. In the Bozak B-207A 2-way 'coaxial' system, a capacitor of 4.5 uF is used in series with the 8 ohm tweeter pair to bring it in at 4,500 Hz. "


I believe my original JBL LE14 project is #11 on the list of projects too.

FWIW, I picked these Bozaks up to possibly replace the Altec A7s which are huge and dominate my listening area. But despite my efforts, they never gave me pause like the Altecs did. But now with the initial Econowave graft they are more enticing than either stock or Tobin modded, and quite possibly may supplant the A7s, which was the original intention anyway.

Here's the Econowave link; there's DAYS of good reading there. And a pic of my JBL LE14 project below it, which the Altecs replaced due to a sweeter midrange. That will be test for the Bozaks.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=150939&highlight=econowave

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I am terribly sorry if I implied that you were a DIYer. So I am truly sorry for making that assumption. I didn't technically mean it to come out that way. I know most people will know more than I ever probably will as I haven't been exposed to too much of the community like this, as you can tell I just more or less started up on here. I've been of the type of "if it sounds good, i want it" :) If it doesn't, get something new. :) I do wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and so far it seems like everything is going swell for you. Do you plan on building an enclosure around the top of the horn and tidying everything up if everything suites your fancy? Sorry if I am being a redundant idiot, gotta start somewhere, eh? And you are the lucky target. :)
 
I also noticed that you were comparing them to the Altec A7's. My dad actually hand built a pair to exact specs. While they get zero playing time since the acquisition of the altec model 19's and prior to that the 604-e's they are still hard to surpass.
 
Windir5 said:
I am terribly sorry if I implied that you were a DIYer. So I am truly sorry for making that assumption. I didn't technically mean it to come out that way. I know most people will know more than I ever probably will as I haven't been exposed to too much of the community like this, as you can tell I just more or less started up on here. I've been of the type of "if it sounds good, i want it" :) If it doesn't, get something new. :) I do wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and so far it seems like everything is going swell for you. Do you plan on building an enclosure around the top of the horn and tidying everything up if everything suites your fancy? Sorry if I am being a redundant idiot, gotta start somewhere, eh? And you are the lucky target. :)
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Oh, no need to apologize for the DIY thing; I wish I knew as much as many who wear that title proudly here, but I'm not that trained in the designs here. I'm more of a follower who can piece some stuff together :yes:

As to the picture, that's the mockup to see if the project had any merit. It's the Econowave LE14 crossover with the 900 hz woofer cross and some parts I had waiting for a JBL L60 project. IF I like what I hear from two of these with a 1200 hz crossover, I'll install the horn in the B209A hole it stuffed the shirt in. I also want to try the 6x12 horn used in the other Econowaves as this PH-715 horn was bought to fit the smaller JBL L60 cab.

And the A7s are a bit unique as they are later models with the MR994 composite CD horn and not the usual 511. Very nice, but as with all A7s they don't dig deep like the Bozak B199A does.

Hopefully, this project will give me what I'm looking for. So far so good...
 
superdog said:
I'm ok with my 302a speakers but I only listen to jazz and classical on them.They do not do rock well.IMO
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Actually, I listen to classical a lot down here and again, they didn't fare as well as I expected.

I think a big part of it is the Altecs though, as I'm listening to some jazz piano right now on them and it's sweet, with the "right over there" sound I prefer. The bigger bass with a lesser mid and highs just made them awkward head to head with the Altecs.

They sounded intriguing enough last summer out in the driveway unmodded to proceed, and again down here to order the parts for the Tobin mods, but ultimately the project fell short until this new wrinkle was introduced when I considered using the B199a in the cab as a passive sub and started doing some research earlier today.
 
Andyman said:
Actually, I listen to classical a lot down here and again, they didn't fare as well as I expected.

I think a big part of it is the Altecs though, as I'm listening to some jazz piano right now on them and it's sweet, with the "right over there" sound I prefer. The bigger bass with a lesser mid and highs just made them awkward head to head with the Altecs.

They sounded intriguing enough last summer out in the driveway unmodded to proceed, and again down here to order the parts for the Tobin mods, but ultimately the project fell short until this new wrinkle was introduced when I considered using the B199a in the cab as a passive sub and started doing some research earlier today.
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You may well be right.I don't have Altecs to compare to.
 
superdog said:
You may well be right.I don't have Altecs to compare to.
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Could be, but the Econowave top end is a formidable system. It's been grafted onto lots of production speakers and used in many custom builds; there's 120 projects in the thread!. I built mine years ago out of some research to improve the top end of my Altec Valencias, which I bought to shoot out against my Klipsch La Scalas.

After a LOT of work on the Valencias, I built a prototype Econowave cabinet that bested both the Valencia and La Scalas and used those speakers for several years until I acquired the A7s with every intention of flipping them.

Well, that didn't happen once I started to listen to them....

I just switched over to the mono FM on the Bozak again, and it's pretty nice. There does seem to be a slight dip after 1000 hZ in the RTA, but hopefully moving up to 1200 hz from 900 will bring it up to flatten it. I also have to figure out the right settings for the bass and get it up off the ground as these cabs have no riser, but there's more bass here than I've heard in a long time.

We're talking palpable string bass and that's pretty interesting and something the Altecs don't do...
 
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A busy week behind me, so i'm able to dig a bit more into these guys today. I found the parts to rework the crossover and have it hooked up to the waveguides using a set of the Pyle 612 horns borrowed from Kegger and am playing one channel now on the Altec amp.
I like it enough that I'm going to rework the other cab so I can get the full effect.

More to follow later today....
 
I made a set of partially finished e-wave "podules" to sit atop an otherwise unmodified speaker, "borrowing" the woofer without disturbing the rest. Never got around to using them yet.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
 
I have a pair of Bastardized Symphony Moorish....Bozak woofer, (1) per cabinet, bozak metal mids, Late 60's Jensen Horn tweeters, extra speaker holes were all plugged, cabinet backs modified.....they rock hard, do jazz and classical well...are my favorite speakers. Modified 302 crossovers.
 
The Ewave concept really is quite nice. I liked my JBL versions quite a bit; heck it took Altec A7s to displace them.
Right now I'm doing the standard trick of laying the horns on top with the crossover out too so I can massage it to my liking. I didn't have a 1.5 mH coil for the woofer, so I'm using a 1.25 which allows it to run up to 1450 instead of 1200, and I'm pretty fine with that. I'm going to clip in a .3 mh coil to get me to the 1.5 and see how that sounds, as well as going back to the 3.0 that was in there.

FWIW, the spectrum analyzer on my cell phone shows a surprisingly flat curve. I have to dig a bit more to find out the best settings, but right now I'm using an online pink noise generator and the dba scale.

Does that sound right?? :dunno:
 
Recpro said:
I have a pair of Bastardized Symphony Moorish....Bozak woofer, (1) per cabinet, bozak metal mids, Late 60's Jensen Horn tweeters, extra speaker holes were all plugged, cabinet backs modified.....they rock hard, do jazz and classical well...are my favorite speakers. Modified 302 crossovers.
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I tried the Tobin mods and they just didn't do it for me, but again, I've been listening to horns here for that last 10 years or so, and that seem to be my preference. that and 2 years of lovely Altec midrange.

Once I get the other cab roughed in, I'll add some bananas so I can swap back and forth between the Altecs and Bozaks for some true head to head competition.

That should be interesting...:yes:
 
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