Best Reg for the Money?

[buddhasummer]

Does that look like a joke?

missed that one, I thought it was the "HOG sucks" comment. It's all over my head, I'm out.

 

[Locus]

I went with a Mk25 and G250v second stages and love them. Have you talked to anyone at IDC? Very GUE friendly over there.

Please pardon my ignorance, but what is GUE?

If you have 1 regulator on parts for life its ok to pay $75 every year or even every other year. If you have 10-15 regs in the family that becomes costly

BTW servicing a reg does not necessarily give you a piece of mind, it might as well do the opposite. It really depends on how good the technician is and good ones are very hard to find.

This is the main reason I would consider learning to service my own regs. It seems to me that redundancy is a core principle of scuba safety. I want to have backups for everything including regs, but doubling or tripling my maintenance expenses makes it unfeasible.

On the other hand, it's not an idea that I take lightly, given the danger that an improperly self-serviced reg can represent.

At this point it seems likely that I will purchase a reg with a "free parts" style warranty (regardless of whether yearly service is truly necessary or if it's a cash-grab by the LDS industry), and re-evaluate whether I should be servicing it on my own in a few years, once I have a better sense of how frequently I will dive, and how familiar I am becoming with the inner workings of the equipment.

 

[buddhasummer]

Welcome | Global Underwater Explorers

Not sure about Wikis accuracy but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Underwater_Explorers

 

[ams511]

This is the main reason I would consider learning to service my own regs. It seems to me that redundancy is a core principle of scuba safety. I want to have backups for everything including regs, but doubling or tripling my maintenance expenses makes it unfeasible.

Many regulator manufacturers have switched over to a two-year rebuild interval with a check in between. I would assume, the check should not be more than $25.00. If you don't want to go the DIY route then pick a regulator with a two-year interval. I know Scubapro, Aqualung, Apeks, HOG, and Atomic do.

While redundancy is nice you are not going to dive two regs underwater at the same time (unless you are diving doubles or using an H or Y valve). Where having two regs is nice if your reg develops a problem on a boat and you can swap out the reg for backup. That is the quickest and easiest way to fix a regulator problem and continue diving.

Remember, warranties and parts-for-life programs are designed to sell regulators not to service them. In many programs if you miss an annual service you are out of the program. So make sure you read the fine print and do not believe what the dive shop says. The problem you will have is that if you take a break from diving you will be tempted not to service the regulator and then you will be out of parts-for-life.

 

[chrpai]

You don't have to be diving doubles or an H/Y valve to dive two regs. There are these things called pony / stage bottles.

Expense is just part of the cost of doing business. But it can be managed. My AL40, BP2, Hog DUROC 2nd Stage, 6" SPG (2") and stage rigging was $400 out the door. That was paid for by the savings of a Hog D1 single tank set compared to what the LDS wanted for an MK25/S600 full set.

I advocate frequent inspection over maintenance. If my reg passes inspection with solid IP lockup, I dive it without regard to how many times it's been wet.

Put another way, you can have a $1000 reg with 99% reliability or you can have 2 $500 regs with 99% reliability and you are looking at 4 9's. (99.99%) The reliability of the two regs has to go all the way down to 90% each to get back to the same 99% reliability of just one reg.

It's the same redundancy concepts that we use in storage arrays in data centers. I've said this before and people jump on me "storage arrays aren't life support equipment..." but I don't buy that. If things go south at work I'm out of a job and living under a bridge so I take both seriously.

 

[buddhasummer]

Please pardon my ignorance, but what is GUE?



This is the main reason I would consider learning to service my own regs. It seems to me that redundancy is a core principle of scuba safety. I want to have backups for everything including regs, but doubling or tripling my maintenance expenses makes it unfeasible.

On the other hand, it's not an idea that I take lightly, given the danger that an improperly self-serviced reg can represent.

At this point it seems likely that I will purchase a reg with a "free parts" style warranty (regardless of whether yearly service is truly necessary or if it's a cash-grab by the LDS industry), and re-evaluate whether I should be servicing it on my own in a few years, once I have a better sense of how frequently I will dive, and how familiar I am becoming with the inner workings of the equipment.

I think you might be a little confused re redundancy. Using an AI computer and also using an SPG is redundancy, carrying two lights one primary and one back up is redundancy, wearing a computer and a bottom timer is redundancy. Owning two regulators does not make diving any safer and is not redundancy, unless you have both sets hooked up to two different tanks and are diving both at the same time. Granted having a spare reg set might save a days diving if one set has a fit but more safety it does offer.

 

[Bigd2722]

When we asked about the HOG regs which seemed very popular among DIR divers, we were told that the second stage is much heavier and can lead to jaw fatigue when compared to the Apeks. We were also told that the parts inside were not as high quality. And although you can save money by servicing the HOG regs yourself, you are actually supposed to take a course and be certified before you order the service kits. In addition, we were told that you will need to buy special tools to service the regulators. All of this didn't seem worth it unless you owned quite a few sets of regs (which technical divers certainly seem to do).


.

I call bs on your dive shop

 

[cerich]

Yeah, i think your insight into the perceptions of us is pretty spot on. Funny enough, we ONLY sell to Dealers, online sales??? LOL, every brand allows that now, independent dealers our policy is very simple, we prefer an established dive shop, when the local established shops don't want to carry us or are dealers but not supporting us (basically buying nothing and pushing other brands) then we will open the part time shops in the area. Independent instructors we also have a program that they buy from our dealers, not us directly. Part sales, funny, we are far from the only brand not making any effort to stop part sales...we are however the ONLY one to make formal training available thru our DEALERS (here is that word again) which IMHO is the responsible way to do it. That is why we approached TDI and later UTD joined us in offering.

They are perceived to conflict with the shops business model. The truth is far different, we try to drive business to our dealers. by the way it WORKS.

Unfortunately, in some cases where the dislike is coming from a shop owner or employee, it seems that the problem may be that HOG/Edge treats the divers as their customers more than the shops (online sales, independent dealers, parts sales) and many shops don't like that. Other manufacturesrs act as those there retailing shops are their customers and want as little to do with divers as possible. HOG policies are perceived to conflict with typical scuba shop business models.

 

[eelnoraa]

When we asked about the HOG regs which seemed very popular among DIR divers, we were told that the second stage is much heavier and can lead to jaw fatigue when compared to the Apeks. We were also told that the parts inside were not as high quality. And although you can save money by servicing the HOG regs yourself, you are actually supposed to take a course and be certified before you order the service kits. In addition, we were told that you will need to buy special tools to service the regulators. All of this didn't seem worth it unless you owned quite a few sets of regs (which technical divers certainly seem to do).

Finally, just to be thorough, I also briefly looked at a couple of other reg packages being sold online that was less expensive than Apeks so you may want to check out the Hollis DC1-212 package at DRIS:

I won't say HOG 2nd stage's material is low quality. It is all comparitive. It may not be the best in the market, but it has better material and built better compare to Hollis DC212. Between Hollis and HOG, I will go with HOG. The only shortcoming of HOG in this case is probably lack of local support depending on where you are.

I am sorry Hollis/Oceanic, you guys really need to step up and use better material and built your 2nd stage better.

 

[agilis]

I think you might be a little confused re redundancy. Using an AI computer and also using an SPG is redundancy, carrying two lights one primary and one back up is redundancy, wearing a computer and a bottom timer is redundancy. Owning two regulators does not make diving any safer and is not redundancy, unless you have both sets hooked up to two different tanks and are diving both at the same time. Granted having a spare reg set might save a days diving if one set has a fit but more safety it does offer.

I assume by "diving both (regulator and tank combos)at the same time" you mean only that you have two sets with you and ready to go, but are actually using only one to breathe from, except in an emergency. Total redundancy means total duplication and disconnectedness. If one tanks and reg set is empty, switching to the other set for reasons other than emergency puts you back in the non-redundancy category.