You might look for a dead one that has a good laser assembly on a
marketplace newsgroup, or have someone in the US freight forward it for
you. Probably a $160 new CD player will not be as good as your Sony-it
might be but I'd not bet on it.

The bottom line is that build cost usually will out-your player
probably cost more to build than new ones do. While some of that may be
offset by genuine improvement, materials and processes haven't greatly
changed in-what,15 years?- so a more cheaply built unit won't last as
long. This is certainly true of VCR's-given replacement parts of
quality, you cannot buy one new as good as what was made in the first
years of front-load production. It's true of washing machines, car
engines, and many other things as well.