David P
Guest
I do not own either of these brands personally but I am an authorized tech for both brands... There is nothing wrong with either of these two brands, I do feel that the Oceanic is a bit more "budget minded" than the Atomics. I took the Oceanic class first, rebuilt all of their regs and found them to be just about the same as other brands. When I took the Atomics class I was actually impressed by their regs! The attention to detail was great, the designs were well thought out and very simple. It didn't strike me as how many parts they could cram into a package it was more like how can we make this a high quality unit with less parts... The latest balanced piston oceanic still looks like some of the older scubapro regs, nothing bad, but nothing super either, a solid built reliable reg. Looking at the atomics, they have been in business ~11 years, they have basically two 1st stages, old piston style and new piston style. Other than a drop in part the rest of the reg is the same. There are a few options though: Swivel/non swivel, titanium/monel/stainless. Acording to the mags their T2 reg beats out all other regs...wow the same reg they've been making for 11 years with basically only 1 change in design still is #1. There are 2 things about Atomics that I'm not wild over...1) is to make it environmentally sealed you fill it up with some expensive goop (Im not sure what other shops charge but I'd guess about $30 in goop plus a special rubberband) not that there is anything wrong with this but thats an extra fee every other year and more work for the tech cleaning it 2)their "Automatic Flow Control (AFC)" on all other regs with a "manual" flow control device you switch it to dive and jump in the water. This one slowly turns the knob (there is actually no knob but pretend there is) for you as you descend past ~50 feet. This seems like a weak spot in the design to me personally I leave my MFC set to dive all the time and never turn it off... sorry if Im starting to sound like Andy Rooney. There is one last detail that I'm on the fence about, their seat saver. When your reg sits in the closet there is a knife edged hole cutter(kinda looks like a whole cutter) that is sitting up against a soft rubber seat. This knife edge moves away from the seat only when you inhale, but at all other times it is being pushed into the seat via spring tension. Atomics decided that there was no need for the knife edge to be making a dent in the soft seat when your reg is sitting dry in the closet so they added a wavy washer to separate the knife edge soft rubber until air pressure is applied. This is one of the main reasons that Atomic regs don't require rebuilding EVERY year as other regs do. I think this is a pretty slick add on to the reg, if it fails then the reg works like all other regs and wears the seat faster.
In the end (finally) if I were to buy another reg for normal recreational diving conditions, I would buy an Atomics. I would not buy the T2 as I just don't have that kind of money to blow on a reg. I think the T regs are for people with more money than brains, or for the people who travel allot and weight is a key consideration.
hth just my humble rambling...
In the end (finally) if I were to buy another reg for normal recreational diving conditions, I would buy an Atomics. I would not buy the T2 as I just don't have that kind of money to blow on a reg. I think the T regs are for people with more money than brains, or for the people who travel allot and weight is a key consideration.
hth just my humble rambling...