You raise a good point... doing annual maintenace on them has to be ridiculous.. unless you do your own, but still parts must add up after a while. Now do you still do the annual on items that you do not use every year.. is that good owning practices.. do you do each item each year or do you keep some items only on a need by need basis???
DISCLAIMER - If you pay any attention to me you'll void your warranty, ruin your gear, and DIE! The following is provided for entertainment purposes only - I do NOT recommend that any of you do stuff my way
Let's see here... how to say this without sounding flippant or careless or overly cynical... maintenance schedules are for the lowest common denominator. They are designed to maintain safety in the neglected and abused product, to protect the manufacturer from lawsuits and to give the maintainer steady business as much as to actually cover needed parts replacement. A regulator that hits the salt water a couple of times a year and then gets thrown in a closet
needs annual maintenance. But frequent inspection, diligent care in handling, cleaning and storage, and attention to performance and minor adjustments can cut way, way down on "scheduled" maintenance.
Warranty issues aside (you must comply with the maintenance schedule if you want to maintain your warranty), many pieces of gear that are properly cared for can go many years between overhauls. I have a regulator, for example, that's had two overhauls in over 35 years of reliable service, and one of those was because of an intentional salt water flood while changing a blown tank valve o-ring on a stage at 90'.
So... by paying attention, and doing my own, I can keep the maintenance issue manageable. And I have my tanks spread out so that I do a couple of VIPs every month and have one or two in hydro every quarter.
I will say this - if you're not a born futzer* who relishes constantly "messing with" equipment, you don't want to accumulate anywhere near the pile that many of us have accumulated over the years.
Rick
*futz - v. to constantly inspect, adjust, tweak, improve, clean, polish, examine, adjust, tweak, improve, adjust...
futzer - n. one who futzes. see Hogarth, William ... Main