Bozak B-209B

A midrange driver that Bozak sold as the cure for cone coloration, and built a whole modular speaker system around.

Overview

The B-209B is a midrange speaker - a single component, not a system. It is the piece Bozak's own advertising pointed to when it wanted to explain why its big multi-way arrays sounded different from everything else. The company's catalog copy in Audio (March 1969, p.17) called the B-209B "unique in both design and construction." It was built around a patented laminated neoprene-and-aluminum diaphragm that was claimed to eliminate the coloration normally associated with the break-up of speaker cones. That is marketing language and should be read as such. It is also the most specific technical claim Bozak ever made about this driver in print.

The driver matters less here than the system it belonged to. Bozak sold its speakers on a "building block" principle, and the B-209B was the middle step. HiFi-Stereo (December 1967, p.48) laid out the scheme plainly. An owner could start with as few as three speakers - a bass unit and a tweeter pair. Then he added another bass and another tweeter pair. At step three he added a midrange and a crossover network, and that gave him a genuinely large system. The B-209B was that midrange. The pitch was that you grew your speaker the way you add players to an orchestra. The same components used in Bozak's flagship Concert Grand were available individually for building into furniture or walls.

Impedance is 8 ohms. That figure is consistent across the surviving documentation, including a reader's service inquiry in Audio about a related Bozak crossover and driver set, where all drivers in the array are listed at 8 ohms. Beyond that, the archive's documentation on the B-209B is thin. No independent laboratory measurement of this driver's frequency response, power handling, or distortion has surfaced in the material collected here. The surviving Bozak copy is promotional rather than test data.

The B-209B is a component, so it changes hands as a bare driver or as a pull from a parted-out system, not as a complete speaker. The related B-209C also appears in period classified listings alongside the B-209B. Buyers should confirm exactly which variant is being offered before assuming compatibility.

Condition matters a lot here. A midrange driver that has been run hard in a multi-way array for decades may have a diaphragm that no longer performs as designed. The neoprene-and-aluminum construction Bozak advertised is not something a casual repair shop will have parts for. Buyers should ask for photographs of the diaphragm and confirmation that the driver is being sold as tested rather than as-found. The archive has no confirmed production dates for the B-209B and no documented original list price for the driver on its own.

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