I use and Aqualung legend for my primary, and an Oceanic Alpha 7 for my pony reg. I'm going away next month, and want to do some diving. Can I put the Oceanic second stage on the Aqualung first stage since it has the overbalanced diaphram?
Aqua lung& Oceanic mix?
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rescuediver009
Contributor
This is not uncommon. Just make sure that it doesn't breathe so well that it trickles at depth.
You may need to adjust the second stage to work with the different 1st. It won't hurt anything to mix brands.
While mixing brands is generally OK, the specific combination you've mentioned is not recommended. The overbalanced first stages such as used by Apex and the Aqualung Legend are meant to be used with balanced second stages, which the Alpha 7 is not. This is due to the fact that the cracking pressure of an unbalanced second stage is affected by the intermediate pressure because of the downstream valve design. On the overbalanced first stages, the intermediate pressure does not remain constant relative to ambiant pressure, it increases the deeper you go to account for the greater density of the air moving through your regulator. So if your second stage was set to crack easily at shallower depth, it COULD (but not necessarily will) freeflow at depth. And if it's set to breath easily at depth, you may have to suck hard at shallower depths.
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