Alpine soloist?

[Wallowa]

Ah, okay. I was thinking of this one (which has optional J-valve): XS Scuba Thermo One-Piece Twin Manifold for Scuba Diving

rx7diver

Close...bet same materials and design but mine is yoke only [DH] and cost $250 not $799! I believe they are actually made in Taiwan, not sure of that....but beautifully done.

Ps....Thought the plate on your DH was green [Voit] my error....you have a great reg there....

 

[Wallowa]

Little research on black finish on XS Scuba PVD,,,

PVD stands for Physical Vapor Deposition, a vacuum coating process that applies a thin, hard layer of material—often titanium nitride or similar compounds—onto a substrate like stainless steel or aluminum.

 

[lizardland]

It can be VERY inconvenient and inconvenience multiple folks. Some divers must ren their gear, and changin valves is niot really easy.

It is an example not a prescription. "Some divers" can be used to argue for anything. I'd happily bet the vast majority of solo divers aren't renting cylinders on a regular basis.

Also, an H valve is a redunant first stage but not redundant air. Not really the sam,e thing.

How is it not the same thing? It allows you to manage air supply in the event of a catastrophic loss of air and preserve enough gas to reach the surface. You can argue about the semantics of the word (which I'm sure you will) but the end goal is to not have one single gas supply that can disappear with a single failure. Sure a neck oring can go but in 30 years I've never seen it happen other than when filling cylinders. Or they can just plain old run out of air but I would hope any solo diver is a little bit better than forgetting to look at their SPG.

And some who are not with us anymore because they chose to dive "their way" instead of taking reasonable precautions and/or redundancy....and not hear to post waht a bad idea that way.

Their choice. I'm not the dive police. 20 years ago I'd care but these days there is so much information so freely available that there's not much excuse for reinventing the square wheel. There aren't that many novel mistakes to make in diving any more that someone hasn't already made. Every time someone blasts themselves to Valhalla because their latest genius idea turned out to be more Jack Kevorkian than Jacques Cousteau there's a pretty good chance half a dozen people have made that same mistake before and this new guy either chose to ignore it or chose not to do any research. "This time it will work" is the phrase every divorce lawyer or undertaker loves to hear.