Like I said, I have quizzed Sony parts, tech assist, and field engineers on
the matter several times over the years. They all tow the company line and
say that any parts labelled as critical safety parts should be purchased
from Sony. Beyond that they have said that Sony does not use higher specs
on virtually any parts that use the standard labelling conventions. They
do, of course, specify feature sets on programmable devices and have certain
semis made specifically for them that are not "off the shelf" parts. The
Sanken regulators in question are not among those. Lots of service people
make generalizations and subscribe to mythology and beliefs that do not hold
up under scrutiny. Paying several times more to get the STRS6301 from Sony
rather than other legitimate Sanken distributors simply does not make sense.

Like I said, If you know the parts specifically and do the research, there
may be better options than buying the "original" parts.

Leonard

"Jerry G." wrote in message
...
Sony themselves do not do the testing. The manufactures do this for
them, as part of their purchase agreement. This is why you will hear
many service people like myself, that when buying the original parts,
there are much less recalls.