Elite TZ-9 Speaker

The TZ-9 stands as one of the finest, if not the finest, speaker that Pioneer has ever built for consumer use. It was engineered by Pioneer's Technical Audio Devices (TAD) Professional Loudspeaker Components Division in Long Beach, California. It was sold only in North America and only through select Pioneer Elite dealers.

Pioneer's audio engineers spent a considerable amount of time in engineering this speaker to compete head to head with the best and most expensive speakers on the market.  Pioneer's Takashi Oyaba delivered a white paper report in November 1988 at the  AES 85th Convention titled: "A New Loudspeaker System with Reduced Radiation of Sound Pressure from Parasitic Enclosure Vibration." 

The TZ-9 featured two 10-inch woofers front and rear, a 2.56-inch dome mid-range and a 1.0- inch dome tweeter. the mid-range and tweeter employed newly developed ceramic carbon and ceramic graphite. The speakers measured 48.6 inches high, 14.6 inches wide and 20.1 inches deep. They were finished in oak veneer and weighed an astounding 143 pounds each. A heavy-duty handcart had to be used to move them into listening position. The point of the speaker's weight was to cancel resonances from the considerable bass it could generate. Perhaps most impressive was the TX-9's price: $4000 per pair! Not many of these speakers were sold for the brief time they were available.  They were reviewed in the June 1990 issue of Audio magazine and that review will be added to this page soon. The ad copy from the September 1989 issue of Stereo Review is included below.

Front and back view of the TZ-9 with shipping carton.

TZ-9 Ad Copy