Pioneer TZ-7

Extremely rare set of high-end loudspeakers, developped partly in Japan and partly in the USA by Pioneer's Technical Audio Devices' professional audio monitors division (TAD).

Made in the USA and only for the USA market so the TZ-9 was tagged with the Pioneer ELITE tag and badge and wasn't named differently elsewhere.

The tweeter' diaphragm is made of ceramic carbon, a material which combines the usual (desired) suspects : light weight, high rigidity, low resonance and optimal internal loss... but not as much as the TZ-9's ceramic graphite.
The mid dome is a much more "basic" driver than that of the TZ-9.

The 20cm woofer is multiplied by two, one front & one back, working in tandem and fastened together : that's Twin Bass Drive, for even more clean bass response and minimized cabinet vibrations.
The d'Appolito positioning of the tweeter (middle instead of top) allows a closer version of the "one point" source illusion and also helps smooth horizontal dispersion.

The TZ-7 is the regular oak finish, the TZ-7 Limited is the black piano lack finish which however, here, was carried out with even more care and costly measures : instead of assembling the enclosure and then applying the finish in one go, Pioneer (ie. TAD) decided to partly assemble the cabinet, finish the sides separately and then apply the rest of the lacquer.

Which, manu-facturing-wise, meant adding multiple sanding & polishing steps until perfect perfection was reached. A very rare attention which perhaps only Sonus Faber goes into on a regular basis.

The TZ-9 is a (much) bigger near-equivalent - unfortunately just as rare, but just as made by TAD.