Looking for first hand experience....

[hex92]

The only thing that I am honestly not sure of is the dry kit on the Dive Rite. I don't know if they have copied the Apeks with the dry seal, or if they have adopted the silicone filled cap, which in my opinion would blow it out of my consideration.

I have the DR RG2500. If you get it with the ICE kit it is sealed....And that seal is a dry seal, not filled with gunk.

 

[oxyhacker]

The Apeks and the DR are both diaphragm 1sts, and use a virtually identical dry seal system. The grease filled system you are thinking of is used mostly on balanced piston 1sts, like the SPs and the Atomics.

Some, mostly older, diaphragm 1sts use silicone, but it's a liquid silicone rather than grease, and is pretty well sealed inside, so it doesn't usually leak the way the grease in the BPs does. Actually, it really isn't problem on the BPs anyways - you just wipe the excess off occasionally, and it leaves a nice protective coating on the metal.

DR is fairly new to the regulator business, and there are probably many more places that can service Apeks at this point, esp outside of the US.

The silicone or Christolube filled 1st stage is what had me considering the US4. My Atomic M1 has that stuff in it and it seems like there is always some little bit of it that manages to get squeezed out. Does the Apeks not have that? I'm leaning more toward the Apeks right now based on price but can't seem to find anything on thier website about service locations, just a link to aqualung USA's website. Will an Aqualung dealer service them? I'd like to learn to do it myself but in case that doesn't work out I'd like to have a backup plan.