Yamaha HX-10000 phonostage, any views?


Hi,

Has anyone ever heard this top of the line cost-no-object phonostage by Yamaha? The HX-10000 was released in 1987. It was part of their Centennial edition. Dual mono and all in big well isolated chassis. I love the vintage Yamaha phonostages but this one is rare and expensive so before I put my money down, I would like some inputs from you all. Anyone heard them? Whats your take on this unit?

http://www.thevintageknob.org/yamaha-HX-10000.html

pani

Showing 3 responses by larryi

Solid state from 1987 is getting a bit old and challenging to find replacement parts.  It is not like old tube gear where replacement parts are easy to find and the core parts that are not easily replaced can be expected to last a very long time.  Still, if it is a matter of replacing capacitors, it will be serviceable.  

Lyra once made a phono stage, the Lyra Connoisseur (based on design purchased from Mares), that was an all out assault on the state of the art.  I got to hear this extremely lively and vivid sounding phono stage.  Lyra stopped production claiming that they could no longer manufacture the component to their high standards while being ROHS compliant.  What could be in their phono stage, other than lead solder, that would make it non-ROHS compliant?  In any case, many years after it went out of production, I tried to search for it and found that it rarely sold, and when it did, it went for $15,000-$20,000.

I could not think of what it utilized that was non-compliant, except for lead in solder.  Their phono stage was NOT battery based; it had a massive separate power supply.  Maybe ROHS was an excuse for ceasing production, for all I know.   I wish I could hear one today and compare it to some of the better phono stages on the market.

I own gear that is built using some very old vintage parts, such as 80 year old input and  output transformers.  Although these are not subject to high temperatures so it is doubtful that they have PCBs in them, I would be concerned if they start to leak.  Fortunately, I don't run mercury vapor rectifiers.  The builder who made my preamp and power amp does build stuff with such rectifiers; it looks nice (beautiful soft blue glow), but I would worry about an accident with those things.