Recommendations wanted for parts vendors.

Hi all!
Knowing that many of you members here do a lot of electronics tinkering for repairing or restoring vintage JBL stuff, I would appreciate getting recommendations on where to obtain speaker and other electronics parts.
I'm asking this for a new friend of mine who owns a audio/visual repair business, as well as a custom furniture shop, in Japan. There aren't any large scale direct order parts suppliers in Japan, so he's been getting parts from U.S. online vendors. Otherwise, he would have to make freiquent trips to Akihabara, the world's electronics parts capitol, which is infeasible due to travel costs and time constraints (as he lives a good 4 hours from Tokyo). Recently, he has been trying to buy some parts from this particular online parts store, whom I'd rather not name here. This vendor has so far been giving my friend nothing but headaches, like having his order cancelled unexpectedly, not getting any replies to his repeated inquiries, etc. It's taken him two weeks just to have his order confirmed, and that was with my intervening on his behalf and only after several emails have been exchanged!
I'd like to suggest to him a couple of other online sellers with good reputations, especially as far as customer service is concerned.
We, my friend and I, would really appreciate your help. Thanks in advance.

We have very few members from that region on the forums so you may not get a response.

Can you be more specific on what he wants to buy?

Ian

Hi Ian.:)
Actually, the poor service vendor I referred to is based in the American mid-west region. There aren't any large-scale vendors of Japanese origin, so my friend's had to rely on US vendors, which I believe number a few. As for the kind of parts he needs, I'll have to get back to him for examples, but basically they are electronics repair parts for amplifiers and speakers. Let me come back with a post on details later. Thanks for your interest.

In my (time)travels I have generally found RS and Farnell to be good, the Tardis is always breaking down and I need a reliable supplier...being stuck on LT246 for the weekend is no fun!

There are however some good specialist in Europe and HK.

:uhmmmm:

Ian

Thanks for the inputs, Ian. I found the websites for both RS and Farnell, and their links will be relayed to my friend.
He mentioned that he needs parts such as tape recorder drive belts, CD player optical laser pick-up ass'y, older transistors. Does anyone know of places where he could get those? Thanks for all your help.