Yamaha HX-10000 phonostage, any views?

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.

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.

• Cadmium (Cd): < 100 ppm
• Lead (Pb): < 1000 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): < 1000 ppm
• Hexavalent Chromium: (Cr VI) < 1000 ppm
• Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBB): < 1000 ppm
• Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE): < 1000 ppm
• Bis(2-Ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP): < 1000 ppm
• Benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP): < 1000 ppm
• Dibutyl phthalate (DBP): < 1000 ppm
• Diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP): < 1000 ppm

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.

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.

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.

Probably someone else built the Connoisseur for Lyra, and their relationship broke down, which was the real reason for discontinuing. Thus are legends born.