My first question is: who are these guys?

Who is Arturo Manzano?

Art Manzano is/was the owner and/or manager of Axiss Audio.  Axiss distributes Air Tight, Accuphase, Souloution, Transrotor and some others.  I know there was a change in ownership about a year ago at Axiss, so maybe this is Art's way of keeping busy.   What I do NOT understand is on the contact form, they request you contact your authorized Koetsu dealler... and since Koetsu is gone... how many "authorized" Koetsu dealers are left???  Food for thought...

@jwpstayman 

I have exchanged emails with him. He says that he is a B2B business.

I frankly don't understand why a middleman needs to be added to what is already an expensive proposition.

Even if VAS only gets you 90% there - for the sake of argument - he's still doing so for fraction of what Art wants to redo my Onyx. As my Rosewood Sig and Onyx have been retipped about 4 and 3 times respectively first by Van den Hul and recently by VAS, I might go to Art once for each to get them back to where they used to be, but otherwise I'm staying with VAS.

@jwpstayman 

I think that I found him on fb. He is of Asian descent, even though his name is Italian? Which might explain why he is connected to Koetsu?

Around the :30 mark of the video, Art says "I brought Koetsu in around 1995. Before then they hadn’t been distributed".

This is not true. I bought a Koetsu Black new in 1985, in New York City. Either from Dave Wasserman at Stereo Exchange or from Andy at Sound by Singer. They had more of them.

That alone makes me wonder about this guy. Is he officially appointed by the Sugano family? Or is everyone and his talking parrot ("I’ll fix your Koetsu! I’ll fix your Koetsu! Arrrk, arrrk!") going to be making this claim?

I would like to see proof of this.

Interestingly, I have been trying to get two little wooden boxes for the two Koetsus that I bought second hand: they came without them. Owing to the sudden death, I imagine that there MUST be a closet full of them somewhere in Japan, yet this guy, the dealer that I bought my Loepard from, and MoFi says there are none! Go figure.