Pioneer PL-90

Pioneer's ultimate LP record player, available at first in Japan in black and under the PL-7L name, much later on in North-America with shiny looks and under the PL-90 name.

Bar the luxurious finish and hopeful "Reference Turntable" USA tag, the PL-7L and PL-90 are the very same : alumina ceramics tonearm with DRA absorber to damp the former's lack of internal loss. Alumina ceramics have very light weight and high rigidity.

The DRA (Dynamic Resonance Absorber) was already on the PL-707 for instance and is nothing more than a miniaturized damping system as found in Pioneer's own PA-5000 or Denon's late 1970s tonearms.
Only it isn't here placed within a complex place like the counterweight but just around the wand - pehaps better but certainly cheaper to engineer :)

With a signal-to-noise ratio of 85dB, a large platter (36cm), a long tonearm (28,2cm, effective), and Pioneer's staple Stable Hanging Rotor and 17kg on the balance, the Quartz-PLL DC-servo coreless motor PL-90 probably was the last worthwhile turntable to come out of Japan and certainly of the brand that produced the ultimate Exclusive P3.