Best Inherently Sealed Regulator for Cold/Warm Diving

[BoltSnap]

You are delusional. I just had an In-and-out burger meal for $6.63 incl. CA State tax. You are not seriously stating that a reg, Atomic, SP, whatever, can be serviced for less than that.

I am not delusional at all, I had a full meal at a fast food place not too long ago and it was more than what it would cost to service the reg. It was more than just a burger however, salad, double burger, drink, fries. It was NY.

 

[Umuntu]

Wow - does that include parts for 3 stages? Well, this may be irrelevant because I don't service my own regs but I am curious.

Bear in mind that a SP MK2 1st stage has only 7 standard O-Rings in Yoke (8 for DIN), which are inexpensive if you buy from O-Ring specialists, plus a HP Seat. At least half of that money will be spent on the HP Seat. Unless you are punching HP Seats "awap style" too.

 

[BoltSnap]

Is it a specific design within Atomic regulators that sets it up for service intervals that are further apart than the other brands or is it just because of what the manufacturer recommends? Or a function of both

It is actually both and I go for even longer time, several years more without any issues. This applies to my own regulators and to the Atomic regulators I use in the dive school training equipment fleet. Atomic regs. tend to last a lot longer without needing service than other brands. This is very noticeable in the training equipment. I have decided to only use the Z2 and the MK17/c370 for our training equipment when we replace what we have now.

Is there any difference between piston and diaphragm intervals? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. (Genuine question.)

Most issues we have had are typically in the second stage and much less in the first stage. The regulators we are phasing out of our training equipment fleet are all diaphragm first stages (Mares, Cressi, etc.). I am not sure that I'd go as far as stating that piston first stages are more reliable as a general statement.

 

[buddhasummer]

All this talk of grease and fast food has made me hungry, think I'll have McDonalds for lunch.

 

[oldschoolto]

I owned a very busy dive center/shop in NY for over ten years that sold many brands of regulators (AL, SP, Atomic, Poseidon, Mares, Sherwood and others) and I run a dive school now and I can make that claim with confidence. I have never seen any regulator that can go for many years of heavy use without any issues at all as the Atomic regulator does.

I'll put a conshelf xiv supreme up against it or any other regulator any day...
Jim...

 

[buddhasummer]

Or my dry sealed Titan Ds.

 

[gcarter]

You can't talk cold water and not include Apeks.

DS4/ATX40s and DST/TX50s, have both and have never had a free flow.

Did a dive last summer with my DST/TX50s where 5 of 10 divers had free flows across 2 dives. I went to 150FFW @4C with nary an issue. Most of the others used Scubapro, not sure of the models.

 

[buddhasummer]

They have been included, and rightly so.

 

[Centrals]

I have no idea which is the best because I do not have any experience on any brand other than Apeks over last 20yrs.
To borrow a phase, kind of, from Henry Ford: Any brand as long as it is Apeks.

 

[BoltSnap]

I'll put a conshelf xiv supreme up against it or any other regulator any day...
Jim...

I had one of those way back. My first three regulators when I got certified in the US were USD regulators. I think the last one was a Royal Supreme (Not sure of the exact model name since it has been a very long time now).