Pioneer PL-L1000
Pioneer PL-L5
(1979 - 1981)

Surprisingly not well remembered it seems - at least there's isn't much to be found over the Internet about the L1000 or its Phase Linear shiny champagne version. The L1000 originally was a PL-L5 in Japan, taking on a silver color rather than the wordlwide black.

When Sony was developping more reliable versions of its Biotracer system (including a linear tracker - the excellent PS-X800), Yamaha had already made the PX-1 masterpiece and was scaling it down for the "smaller" PX-2 and PX-3 - Pioneer launched the PL-L1000, somewhat simpler than Sony's and more straightforward than Yamaha's.
The L-1000 is the beautiful original, the later PL-L1000A had a 2-pad set of square buttons dedicated to arm transport instead of the round shuttle.

Pioneer never used straight tracking tonearms on its high-end record players (Exclusive P3, P5, P10) but the PL-L1000 managed to be a fairly affordable yet good linear tracker with apetizing looks, convenient and well designed features. Not up to a PX-2 or PS-X800 (linear-tracker-wise, what is?) - good looks is the word.

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