interesting points, but almost predictable
The original was built on a single sided phenolic pcb (ditching the pcb... really??), with no through hole plating, so perhaps the style of construction was chosen to be historically accurate and poor serviceability an inherent compromise
To be fair parts choices cannot be questioned without first listening to it, it could sound great as zenelectro said. The parts may have been selected to keep the original voicing, or not. I don't know this, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, so I would think it's unfair to speculate either way about parts choice, or that it could sound like sh!t (from looking at a photo of all things), in a public medium such as this?
Pricing compared to the far east, well that depends where it is made, if fully assembled in the UK then I would think it's fair? Anyway, it's not far off the price of some locally assembled DACs...... perhaps they too could adopt a far east pricing model?