[G0HZU_JMR]

I doubt the dead HP8563EC will end up like that. Whoever collects the WEEE stuff from the company would probably sell it on to someone else who would then repair it or use it as a spare parts donor.

Yes, YIG filters are a bit special. One of the earliest downconverters at work had a YIG filter in the front end. I think it tuned from 500MHz to 2GHz. It required a lot of power to heat it up to a controlled temperature and we also had to write temperature compensation lookup tables for it vs frequency. The YIG filter also had some tuning hysteresis depending on tuning direction. It also took several milliseconds to tune to a new frequency and this was its main downfall at work. It was too slow to tune so it was the last time we used one. However, nothing could compete with it in terms of filter bandwidth and shape factor. Nothing else came remotely close to the YIG filter in this respect.