Probably someone else built the Connoisseur for Lyra, and their relationship broke down, which was the real reason for discontinuing. Thus are legends born.
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?
Showing 10 responses by lewm
I built a pair of Williamson type amplifiers with Acrosound OPTs, using MV rectifiers, simply because I like their "sound". I don't use the amps any more and was thinking of disassembling them to sell the Acrosound OPTs, but I don't know what to do with those MV rectifiers. I've got maybe half a dozen of them, type 83 as I recall. Maybe I would give them to a trusted tube seller or dispose of them in some acceptable way. But they sure looked cool in the dark. Don't you think 80 year old transformers are likely to contain PCBs? Maybe not if they're audio outputs. I recall visiting the Futterman "factory", which was realliy one or two rooms in an office building off Broadway in NYC. Julius Futterman had new power transformers hanging on a clothesline of sorts to dry out, freshly coated in PCBs no doubt. |
RoHS is an EU regulation, I think, but I noticed that the two US based mail order electronics suppliers I use, Digikey and Mouser, do mention RoHS on their spec sheets. Here is what I found: "Any business that sells applicable electrical or electronic products, equipment, sub-assemblies, cables, components, or spare parts directly to RoHS-directed countries, or sells to resellers, distributors or integrators that in turn sell products to these countries, is impacted if they utilize any of the restricted 10 substances. With the rapid spread of digitization, the world’s production of electrical and electronic devices is exploding. Besides mobile devices, think about the coming wave of IoT, smart home assistants, robots, drones, 3D printers, and home medical devices to all corners of the planet...they are all regulated under RoHS. EU RoHS specifies maximum levels for the following 10 restricted substances. The first six applied to the original RoHS while the last four were added under RoHS 3, which took effect July 22, 2019.
There a number of other EU regulations that are adjacent to, and intersect RoHS regulations. These include REACH, WEEE, ELV, EU Battery Regulations. These are discussed on this website." Interesting that beryllium is not mentioned here. Cadmium is used sometimes in re-chargeable batteries, with nickel (NiCd batteries). Was the Connoisseur battery powered? Even if so, you would think they could adapt another type of battery to power it. |
The major change in audio components that has arisen due to environmental concerns is the elimination of lead in solder. That edict did not emanate from the manufacturers;; it came from environmental scientists. It also goes without saying that you never see mercury vapor rectifiers in tube equipment or beryllium cantilevers. There may be other new rules in force in the EU or the UK. Other than that, I would say our hobby is squeaky clean. If environmental consciousness was the intent of your earlier post, it got past me at least. I can’t see anything environmentally dangerous in the HX10000. |
Dear Pindac, You wrote, " As seen from all the Mainstay Japanese Brands offering Audio Devices from this era, the devices produced as their exclusive TOTR Sale Items were typically coming with materials that were selected for their Mass and Volume. Fortunately, It was soon to be learnt in the World of Audio Equipment, betterment was able to be attained using a lot lot less Volume and as time evolved Mass was also seen to be a betterment if substantially reduced. " By this, are you inferring that modern audio companies are uniformly striving to reduce mass and volume? (I assume that mass means weight, and "volume" is a reference to the physical size .) There are certainly some examples of TT makers who prize low mass and therefore also reduced physical size as a feature of their TTs, most prominently Rega, but Rega have been doing that forever. And sure, electronics that use transistors and integrated circuits will naturally tend to be smaller and lighter than electronics that use tubes, but in the area of electronics and speakers, I don’t see where small size and low weight per se are perceived as advantageous to performance. Class D amplifiers are the smallest and lightest possible per unit of power, and no one believes they as a class are superior to other types of amplifiers. Many hold the contrary opinion, in fact. So what exactly were you trying to say? Forgive me if I have misunderstood. The HX10000 seems to me to be about the same size as many 2-box high end, high cost phono stages we have today. |
Theophile, can you refer me/us to actual opinions of the HX10000 phono offered by owners of the unit, to be found on Audiokarma? I can only find one thread in which one guy says he owns one which causes some others to drool with envy. Thanks for any help. Meantime I found one comment on WBF to the effect it sounded “dark” to that listener. I unearthed no formal reviews of it. “Dark” fits with my general impression of vintage SS Japanese gear that the sound is “syrupy”. Of course, my experience is limited, and I’ve never heard the HX10000, although I have heard the Yamaha C1 (I think that’s the model designation for their second best ever phono), and it sounded dark. I remember thinking that I would like to get inside that chassis and upgrade some capacitors and maybe resistors and maybe transistors to see what the C1 could actually do. I think certain pieces of Audio gear, both tube and solid state, both Japanese and American in origin, have become "legendary". And that fact alone artificially enhances our opinion of those items in particular that we've never actually seen or heard and causes us to spend large sums of money in the marketplace, to recapture some magic that maybe isn’t there and maybe in some cases never was. I am certainly not immune to that form of audiophilia, as I own four vintage Japanese direct drive turntables. And I own a pair of Beveridge 2SW speakers from 1980-ish. And the list goes on from there. What I’m saying is that there may be great potential to be developed in the HX10000, but a new owner of an original untampered with example should be aware that there may be work to be done to develop that potential or even to bring the unit up to its OEM peak capabilities. |
In my experience with other high end Japanese gear from that era, I perceived a kind of syrupy coloration in their SS designs.While the quality of construction is very high, the sound was usually lacking. I believe, without having proved it to myself, that the parts quality and function of that era might have been holding back the sound quality. Since 1987, there has been a marked improvement in discrete transistor technology such that the Yamaha might be hugely improved by judicious substitution of the OEM transistors for new upgraded versions that perform the same function, only better due to faster switching rates, lower noise, etc. It is also possible that performance was negatively affected by the use of electrolytic capacitors here and there in the signal path. If so, it would be beneficial to replace any such electrolytics with film capacitors where possible. So, speaking for myself only, I would view the Yamaha preamplifier as an interesting project, probably not something that I could pop into a system and immediately fall in love with. Then too, there is the matter of identifying and replacing any electrolytics that may have become leaky over the 40 years since the unit was built. Modern electrolytics are also much better now than they were then. |