Radio gear museum bound
• New owner Sheryl Martin looking through some of the items left behind at the old 7SD studio.
By Tony Scott
March 10, 2021
Equipment and artefacts from the old 7SD radio studio in Scottsdale are lost to Tasmania but will one day become a public museum display.
Announcers’ desks including turntables and tape cartridge machines and hundreds of vinyl records were removed after the building was sold last November.
The executive general manager of Tasmanian Broadcasters, Tim Holder, said the equipment was too good to discard.
“7SD was the last station to be using this type of gear and there was quite a substantial record library with it.
“The trouble is we don’t have the real estate space to house it.”
Instead, Mr Holder said it had been taken to Ballarat for storage while a decision is reached on its long-term future.
“We have 40 potential sites around Australia where Grant Broadcasters have stations and as a multigenerational radio family they are determined the equipment should be made available for public view.”
He said it was likely a display of how things were in the golden days of radio would be set up in a station where it would have good access to public and enough space to show it off.
The new owner of the studio building Sheryl Martin, meanwhile, is sorting through the material that was left behind.
“When they cleared out the building there were still some things they couldn’t take and we told them not to take them to the tip.”
Mrs Martin concedes that the remainder might still end up as rubbish.
But she believes some of the reel-to-reel tapes might contain important oral history.
The history buff is sifting through the material between customers at her new bric a brac business she is calling The old Clock on the Wall after the regular time call greeting used by long term 7SD manager and announcer Bert Scetrine.