Olson Electronics Wooden Box

Olson Electronics Wooden Box

Approximately 9" x 6" x 3 1/2"high

This is, (as far as I know, a rare) Olson Electronics wooden box. It has nice box joints and one divided compartment that comes out. A few cross braces are missing from the bottom compartment. More than likely to create a storage for larger parts. If I remember correctly, it was full of electronic stuff...like every other cigar box on the basement workshop.

Olson Electronics
Olson Radio was founded in Akron, Ohio in 1927 by brothers Irving, Sidney and Philip Olson. the company had a chain of small retail stores spread across the U.S.. The company was comparable to Radio Shack, selling their own brand speakers, radios and misc electronics and parts.

In the 1960s they were still offering U.S. made speakers vs the competitors that were selling cheap import stuff.

"The company owned another firm originally called American Electronic Parts (AEPC) but later became known as Herald Electronics and was based in Chicago, Illinois, but HE became a sourcing operation for Olson´s in addition to supplying independent dealers with OEM products under a variety of names, that HE was a wholesale supplier meant that Olson´s ownership of the company was never much publicised."

SPLOINK
"The budget nature of some of the company’s goods made for some interesting products, for instance Olson was the company that bought us the "Vibra Sonic" spring reverb, normal spring reverbs use a flat sprung feather attached to a couple of transducers, but to cut costs the Vibra Sonic actually used a bedspring, the sound did not resemble a real reverb in any way but it did make a wonderful “sploink” sound when hard pressed."

RUN INTO THE GROUND
"Olson Electronics was taken over by Teledyne at some point in the latter half of the 60’s and that event marked the start of a decline in the company´s fortunes, Teledyne started dumping low cost but high mark-up wares into the stores and overall quality of the in house brands in general went down."

NOT THE SAME
" Not to be confused with British concern Olson Electronics or a large number of small USA based companies that have appropriated the name since the demise of the original company."