Need advice on light warm water equipment

[randini]

Thank you very much. I have never tried Cressi but of course will look at it carefully. I will have to find someone who carries DiveRite stuff in San Diego area as well. Thank you very much for advice

House of Scuba carries DR and Cressi and are in Sandy Eggo.

 

[BoltSnap]

Cressi makes great free diving equipment, but not scuba, and most definitely not regulators. They are at the bottom of the list. Finding support for them internationally is a hit and miss at best (terrible support actually). Their performance and reliability are mediocre (being generous). I will never buy Cressi anything based on my experience. I am a dive instructor and own a dive school, and get to use and try all sorts of dive equipment from many vendors. I had Cressi regulators and dive computers in my dive school's rental/training equipment fleet, and I pulled them out of the rental/training fleet after only two years of use. I sold them cheap just to get rid of them.

 

[lowwall]

The other regs with worldwide availability is Mares*. The 62X is their compact high performance first stage. Pair it with any of their adjustable second stages. This will save you hundreds of dollars versus comparable ScubaPro regs. You don't get anything more for your money with ScubaPro in terms of performance or durability. They are actually priced very similarly in Europe, but SP jacks up its pricing in North America because it's the better known brand.

I'm also going to second the Hydro Lite suggestion for a BCD. It's rugged, light, compact and the crotch strap makes for a secure fit. It's a much better solution than a cummerbund when you are in the water. DGX makes a similar system with the advantages that it's a little less expensive and it is modular so you can replace individual parts of it's ever needed (it ships fully assembled): DGX Gears SoftPack BCD Package

Or if you don't mind a bit of setup, you could go with a backplate and wing, this gives you the advantage of further streamlining because you can ditch the relatively bulky fully adjustable harness of the above for a simple webbing harness.

* There's also Aqualung, but they've recently been through bankruptcy and were just bought out by the parent company of Mares. We don't know what the future is for their current regsets.

 

[akulamd]

When we dived the liveaboard in Australia I asked ahead of time and they gave the ok to put our transmitters on their first stage regulators. And I've done it with other dive operators as well.

The other regs with worldwide availability is Mares*. The 62X is their compact high performance first stage. Pair it with any of their adjustable second stages. This will save you hundreds of dollars versus comparable ScubaPro regs. You don't get anything more for your money with ScubaPro in terms of performance or durability. They are actually priced very similarly in Europe, but SP jacks up its pricing in North America because it's the better known brand.

I'm also going to second the Hydro Lite suggestion for a BCD. It's rugged, light, compact and the crotch strap makes for a secure fit. It's a much better solution than a cummerbund when you are in the water. DGX makes a similar system with the advantages that it's a little less expensive and it is modular so you can replace individual parts of it's ever needed (it ships fully assembled): DGX Gears SoftPack BCD Package

Or if you don't mind a bit of setup, you could go with a backplate and wing, this gives you the advantage of further streamlining because you can ditch the relatively bulky fully adjustable harness of the above for a simple webbing harness.

* There's also Aqualung, but they've recently been through bankruptcy and were just bought out by the parent company of Mares. We don't know what the future is for their current regsets.

Thank you! Good to know about Cressi stuggles. Thanks for the advice.