Opinions on "downgrading" sidemount regulators

[Jens Bölte]

Hello,

f my memory is correct the only difference in breathing comes from the tuning of the 2nd stage. That would again make DFC marketing BS. So hard to decide

DFC does not facilitate breathing. It just counteracts the IP-drop when starting to breathe. Your work of breathing is determined by the cracking effort (work needed to open the valve; depends on the spring strength and distance of the poppet seat and the valve) and the breathing resistance (put in simple terms maximal potential opening of the valve).

Best wishes Jens

 

[TheCatFish]

Noone has mentioned it yet, but, servo assist systems allow for upside down orientation and are way more resistant to free flow. Some folks dislike the feeling of their cracking behavior, I’ve liked it so far.

 

[Sparksi]

Valtman, sent you a private message.

 

[Valtman]

Hello again!

Forgot to post photos earlier so here we go, this is what Abyss 12S sidemount regs look like. I'm pretty happy with the result. A 40 cm inflator hose seems to be about right, maybe 30 - 35 cm would be even better. The drysuit hose is nowhere to be seen (except in 1st photo) so I'll have to make sure to have the hose in hand when doing the bungees, they could be hard to pull out afterwards. With gloves on and not seeing what you're doing...

The regs aren't rubbing against my armpits/man boobs which was one of the goals, and they don't even look half bad sticking up like that. All other goals are achieved automatically - being lighter than DSTs, not over-balanced and Abyss not having any adjustment knobs. Next I'll tear everything to pieces, see what they look like inside, re-build and try to adjust them to breathe as beautifully as my BM Abyss 22 does.

And then after a six month surface interval, as soon as I get my new suit, I think I should actually try the setup in water. If there's anything to report from that in water session I'll let you know.


Valtteri

 

[grantmac]

That is a very good looking set-up.

I am not really thrilled with how hoses run from 5th ports on my body and I'm thinking about trying some different routing using longer ones.

 

[halocline]

Are you using a drysuit? I was looking at your photos and scratching my head trying figure out why it looked like you had a LP inflator hose on your right tank.

I agree with you about the ‘overbalancing’ thing, IMO the first stage has one job to do, and that’s provide rock solid stable IP that never changes. This overbalancing nonsense is simply the result of a difference in diameter between the environmental diaphragm and the interior diaphragm. It’s a design flaw in my book, and I work on regulators all the time. So I’m sure your new regs are an improvement in that sense.

I personally like very much the 5th port/turret for sidemount. I use the end port for the LP inflator hose, which for me is around 9”. It’s very streamlined and comfortable, but I never am wearing my tanks out of the water. I use the turret to neaten up the routing of the long hose and stage hoses.