Dude,
Deep6 has been on the market for what... 20 months since the DEMA 2015 announcement of their brand, and 12 or so months since deliveries to select 'trendsetters' in the industry. C'mon, "many on the board swear by Deep6"? They may produce a quality regulator, but there is no substantial track record of their products, service, warranty claims, recall practices, etc.
Lots of innovative dive gear brands have come and gone over the years: Farallon, DACOR, U.S. Divers. Rather than Beta testing for a startup, I would recommend that a newbie stay with a recognized, well known brand with a substantial track record of good customer service: ScubaPro, Aqualung, Mares, those are brands in which many on the board swear by.
EOR
that is true, but you have to remember that the regulator is functionally identical to the HOG D3/Zenith which Chris designed. The Deep6 has some incremental changes to the soft parts, but the guts of it are almost the same. They're also produced by ODS which is a massive regulator manufacturer with a well proven history.
I don't know of anyone who swears my Mares in this country that isn't a dealer... Nothing wrong with their regulators, but I don't know anyone in the US who swears by them. Aqualung and Scubapro have different histories, but the cost justification of purchasing them new isn't very good.
A comparable regulator to the Deep6 is the MK25/S600. New from Scubapro that is $770, not including octo, gauge, etc. Another S600 is $430, plus $180 for a 2 gauge console from them. Grand total of about $1400. You bought it all so the shop gave you 20% off, $1100. Aqualung doesn't make a comparable regulator, but the Legend is a similar $750 ish, same with Atomic M1, so pricing for a single tank is $1100-$1400 depending on how generous the shop is.
The equivalent package from Deep6 is $650. Essentially it's 2:1 on the regulators.
To maintain warranty on scubapro and aqualung you'll be spending at least $50/year on service *assuming parts for life, without pfl then it's easily $100/year*, vs. the Deep6 which has the first service for free outside of shipping, or truly free if you DIY. That adds to the advantage.
Going on, we have those of us that are required to DIY service our regs *technical/cave diving*, or those that don't have a trustworthy shop within reasonable driving distance *most everyone*, that choose to invest about $200 in the stuff required to DIY service a regulator. Scubapro and Aqualung both expressly forbid DIY service which will void any warranty you have, as well as having to go to the grey market to purchase parts and having to teach yourself to repair them.
They've already proven themselves on recalls/warranty work with the DIN retaining nut thing that got sent out a few months ago when they realized the machining tolerances weren't up to snuff which caused it to spit out o-rings, so that's a start.
Is saving that amount of money worth the "risk" that if something happens you have to replace it again? I think so, but I think the real risk of that is pretty low. People said the same about HOG close to 10 years ago when it came out, and we never really saw an issue. If this was a new regulator model from HOG which would have been the D3/Zenith 2.0, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's the same regulator, the same guy who designed it, the same manufacturer. It's now orange instead of red *a point of contention for me being an NC State alum and now living in Clemson country grrr*, but it's still the same regulator.... No different than Halcyon selling scubapro regulators right now either. If Halcyon sh!ts the bed, you can still use scubapro parts to service them. If Deep6 goes under, you can still use HOG D3/Zenith parts on it if you want, or buy direct from ODS, or a myriad of other places. At least these are using standard parts so if something happens like when Dacor got acquired you aren't up a sh!t creek with parts because they're all proprietary
