virgin post: Early Polk history question

[mhardy6647]

It's hard to believe that after ca. 26 years as a Polk owner (Monitor 7A's in charming rosewood vinyl, as well as one of the world's few LF14 subwoofers) it's hard to believe I never visited Polk's website, or forums, unitl yesterday.

So, I decided to look around for some information on early Polk history. I didn't find much, so I'll ask you all one question. When I was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins in the 1970's, the on-campus student pub (the "Rat") had a pair of white-cabineted speakers which were reputed to be the original Polk production model... the Polk Model 9. They were tall thin towers with a bunch of drivers in them.

Can anyone tie the JHU Polk 9's with Polk reality?

[RuSsMaN]

They were Polks, that's for sure. 4" drivers if I recall correctly, and an Audax tweeter. Should have had forward and rear firing drivers.

I talked with Stu Lumsden @ Polk about them, the prototype they had mentioned calling it the 'Bozo', because of what Bose was doing with direct-reflecting back in the day. He brought a picture of them to the Texas Polk Gathering back in January.

Obviously, the name didn't fly.

Cheers,
Russ

[mhardy6647]

yup, I heard the Bozo story too... actually the story as I heard it (late-1970's) at JHU was that Polk was going to make Bose knock-offs, but that they received a 'cease and desist' letter from The Mountain (or wherever Bose was at that time... probably Cambridge rather than Framingham), which led Matt et al in a slightly different direction.

Gratuitous aside. Bose's US sales manager goes to our church... guess what kind of PA system (speakers, at least) we have?

BTW... guess I just should've asked at AK :-)