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The Demise of Bozak

Posted by jaynemo (A) on December 5, 2007 at 02:14:43

Interesting day I had yesterday responding to an add for "older wooden box speakers for sale $50" in the local newspaper. I left a message and a woman called me back about 4 hours later. I asked what she had an she said "are you familiar with Bozak". Well things became interesting quite fast as I know a fellow who had rescued thier engineering department in the early 70's when they were still in South Norwalk, CT. Anyway, she went on to say she had worked at Bozak in the early 80's after they had moved from So. Norwalk, to Newington, to Bristol then to New Britain. I wasnt aware of the last two moves. We had a great conversation, she explained everything she had done, right down to making the proprietary sheep wool, paper slurry woofer cone compound, pouring it into aluminum molds, pressing & drying the cones, building and testing the woofers, stuffing cabinets, "they made me do just about everything except run the big table saw...Man, all that equipment was pretty old". All for $6.25 per hour (then later for $4.25 an hour under the table after they laid everyone off just prior to closing). Believe it or not, the main investor at the time was Marvin Starling, a former welter weight boxing champion. His connection to Bozak was his boxing manager, who also happened to be the head manager at Bozak. He will remain nameless. Well come to find out this nameless guy got caught with his hands in the till, got caught cheating on his wife and the company went into financial turmoil. She remembers right in the middle of a huge 400 unit order for thier CS400 concert series model, they had gotten a call from Starling..."sorry the till in dry, you cant order anymore parts". So she was instructed to go out to the warehouse and she managed to cobble up enough material to fill the order, which was basically the end of retail production at Bozak. She said it was a hodge podge of material, right down to the obsolete stickers with the So. Norwalk address on them. After the final closing to alleviate the liquidation costs, she was allowed to take any left over components she wanted, she said she built like ten pairs of speakers for her kids and thier friends, just cobbling up anything she could find. Today she's on disability. She said her wrists are shot from carpal tunnel mainly as a result of hand tapping out the screw threads on all the driver baskets, and she has blown discs in her back as a result of moving heavy cabinets around the shop. "Christ" she says, "I was only 115 lbs soaking wet back then, the CS500 (larger concert series) really did me in". Well I never did buy the CS400's she had. They were cobbled as well, one speaker was made in Norwalk and was a B401-s (or something close to that) and the 12" woofer and 6" mid were face mounted on the inside of the cabinet, the second speaker was a CS400 and the drivers were mounted on the outside of the cabinet with clips. The cabinets were pretty beat up, I mean huge chunks of wood missing. I thought about parting them out, maybe picking up a few bucks or a DIY, because they did sound very good, but I have just way too many irons in the fire right now. She did show me her pristine CS400's, but she wasnt parting with them. Whats funny too is my buddy sells cars and he actually hired Starling some years later as a car salesman, he said he lasted about a week.

Edits: 12/05/07

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