First, your remark is very disparaging to Italians. Much of Scubapro's equipment is made in Italy as well as your SPG.
Second, was not Mares once related to AMF/Voit? I seem to remember the companies having a very strong business relationship. The MR-12 was an old Voit design.
Third, you dive Poseidon regulators which have to be the most "gimicky" regulators on the market and up to a few years ago parts and service were almost unobtainable in the US.
is it untrue?
If you want a top performance sports car that will last and be reliable, do you get a Ferrari or a Mercedes GT? The Ferrari certainly will tend to turn more heads and has a lot of flair, but is much more apt to be in the shop.
In my line of work the equipment analogy holds very true as well. The Italians make their machinery like they make their cars, when they work, by God they are utterly amazing, but they break quite a bit. The German equivalents may not be as "sexy" but they work all the time and are predictable. Now, this doesn't apply to Mares regulators aside from their failed attempt at using a ruby for the HP seat, but the trend does hold true across quite a bit of the things they build. It's not derogatory, it's just a statement based on facts. If I want great food, wine, architecture, art, etc. I go to Italy. If I want better machinery that I know I can rely on? I go to Germany or Japan. If you ask literally anyone who has ever had to purchase machinery, or actually just work with the Italians in general for any multi-national industry, they will all say the same thing. "oh, they're Italian" explains an astounding amount of things. Not good or bad, just explains a lot. Same with German, Japanese, Korean, etc. It's not disparaging, it just is.
I am well aware that Termo makes all of our gauges, and I am well aware Scubapro makes a lot of their stuff in Italy. Not much you can say about Termo, but Scubapro does have quite a lot of gimicky products that exist to satisfy marketing needs and "look cool".
Heart rate monitors on their dive computers
Titanium in the S600
I still don't know how the g260 is meaningfully better than the g250
How many iterations of the MK25 have there been?
Anyone have a hydros pro rip on them already?
Why does one company need 13 different BC models not including their tech line?
so yeah, I count Scubapro as a gimicky Italian company. Doesn't mean I'm not going to dive my MK25's, or my 109's, and it doesn't mean I'll get rid of my Jet fins *that has to wait until
@Deep Six brings out their negatively buoyant fins*, but it does mean I have no problem calling them out for having an excessively large product line and doing "upgrades" every year or two that are there to satisfy a marketing need to have something "new and sexy" vs. a meaningful change. Doesn't make their products bad either, just means they are focused on being "sexy" and leading the charge from a marketing perspective.
I'm not saying that Mares makes bad regulators. If you gave them to me, I'd dive them anywhere I'd dive most other regulators. What I wouldn't do is pay almost $700 for an Abyss when I could save money and buy Scubapro or Apeks, or spend an extra $50 and get Atomic or Poseidon.
What gimicky features are on my Poseidons?
They have a servo assisted valve design in the second stage that hasn't changed in 40 years, which fwiw is a very common valve design in industrial applications, it's a unique adaptation to scuba, but it's actually a surprisingly common valve design for industrial hydraulics and pneumatics. I have 30-40 weaving looms that each have a pair of almost identical functioning valves in them. It's actually also really similar to the power steering valve in your car.
The first stage is a bit unique with their sphere on the MK3 but still follows the same design principals as a normal first stage. It has measurable performance gains in simplicity, balancing, and durability. Less moving parts, more consistent balancing, balls always trump seats in valve designs if you can use them. They just took the effort to figure it out.
On the gimicky front, there is a difference in innovation for the sake of innovation, and innovation to break a paradigm. The ruby sphere was to break a paradigm and improve on an already really nifty first stage design that they had. It works and means something because it was actually a big change to the design of the regulator. Mares choosing to use a ruby because it theoretically should never have to be replaced is a marketing thing, they didn't change anything about the regulator except for the HP seat, and it didn't work. It was also $200 to replace and they apparently only kept a handful in the US at any given time, the Poseidon is $30 to replace if you break it.
You could argue that the optical O2 sensor is gimicky, but it's technology that is attempting to uplift a very old portion of our industry that has seen literally 0 advancements almost 40 years and they had the balls to try something truly new. We'll see if it works and catches on, but that is not gimicky.
Other than that, the second stages have been basically unchanged since they were originally released, with only one dropped from production, and the first stages get a new "generation" when a meaningful upgrade comes out and there have been about a half dozen of those.
Scubapro seems to come out with something "nifty" every year or two for their top end regulators to keep them exciting, constantly tweaking and for what I've seen, no actual benefits. It seems every year or two the MK25 has something tweaked to it, yet they don't really perform any any better than the old ones. Same with the G250/S600 series, something small has to change every year or two to keep the marketing guys happy. Are they small incremental changes? Sure, but why not focus on getting it right to begin with and/or waiting 4-5 years and then release something that is actually worth upgrading to?
For Mares. Only need to pick one current one from their "technologies" section to prove gimicky. What does "power breathing" even mean?
Twin Power
New, flow control manages the delivery rate of your gas, from natural breathing to power breathing. The former is the traditional way of breathing a Mares regulator, (VAD) while the latter (VAD+) provides an extra push when you need it.
MR12 is discontinued, but yes was a Voit design.
Poseidon parts scarcity was due to a poor distributor that is common knowledge. They now have a direct point in the US and for as long as James et al have been running it, everything has been going just fine and they've even released a DIY service class. That is huge progress.
Specific brands aside, my philosophy these days is to look for good value; I'm not persuaded that the expensive brands are worth the premium. If I were buying regs today, I think I would get Deep6, perhaps DGX's version.
