Buying A Cartridge Direct From Japan

I see no advantages, other than a pricing one, for buying from japan directly. Case in point: I had a Shelter 501 mk2 that I had purchased in the US, and then on a business trip to Tokyo picked up another as a back up in the Akihabara district from an authorized Shelter dealer. The performance was identical in every way. There are no technical advantages in my opinion.

Hello Stevecham,

I don't think it's technical advantages that people are looking for in a purchase direct from Japan. There are a lot of cartridges that were just not available outside of Japan (the AT ML 180ooc for example). Many other, like the Highphonic line were and are hard to find outside of the Japanese market. The problem is not just with direct purchase from the manufacturers, but with the auction sites as well. I being an American, can not bid on a auction site in Japan. I have to go through an intermediary with all their added costs.

Regards,
Don

Thank you I had not considered that problem.

First thing first. I think that any parents and/or educational system should teach their kids the English language. Not in order to promote Anglo/American imperialism but to give those kids the wordlwide access to information and communication. It is obvious that Japanese
have deviant opininon in this regard. Their old traditions are , it seems, more important for them. But then this huge Ogura company is not able to answer any of my 5 emails while J. Carr who lives there warned me about communication in English with the Japanese.
The intermediary. We in Holland are not able to approach Van den Hul direct. We need some dealer as an intermediary. What is the job of such a intermediary? He is a 'hatch' between the customer and the 'producer'. I need to post my cart to some dealer who will post the same cart to Van den Hul then receive the cart from Van den Hul and than post the cart to me. For this 'service' I of course need to pay this dealer. To me this make no
sense at all. So I never used Van den Hul's nor his dealer's services but prefer to post my carts direct to Axel. Whoever prefer to do this otherwise is probaly smarter than I.

What is the job of such a intermediary?

To deal with all the general questions and eliminate the time wasters, thereby allowing Van den Hul to concentrate on fixing cartridges.