Flycaster
Contributor
What is your preference and why?
Thanks in advance.
Thanks in advance.
Piston or diaphragm
- Thread starter Flycaster
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what I dive now and what I would dive if I had a choice of any reg on the market are unfortunately a bit different.
my choice for deco bottles are pistons because they tend to behave a bit better with pure O2
my choice for everything else are diaphragms because they are easier to fine-tune the IP and are easier to environmentally seal. While I take very good care of my equipment, I tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to rinsing things off and not having to worry about any sort of contaminants getting into the depth-compensating chamber is important to me.
my choice for deco bottles are pistons because they tend to behave a bit better with pure O2
my choice for everything else are diaphragms because they are easier to fine-tune the IP and are easier to environmentally seal. While I take very good care of my equipment, I tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to rinsing things off and not having to worry about any sort of contaminants getting into the depth-compensating chamber is important to me.
claymore
Contributor
My preference is diaphragm regs because much of my diving is done in cold water and some of the lakes we dive in very silty bottoms and it has happened where we actually dive into the muck because the VI's is so bad you can not see the bottom until you are swimming into the muck.
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If you do bit of a search this has been done to death. Personally I like sealed diapghrams, suitable for all diving conditions, cold, warm, dirty etc. and they don't require the same level of after dive care.
Kharon
Contributor
I'll take piston over diaphragm. Why? 1. They are bulletproof. 2. I can service them myself. 3. I've dove them to 130' in 42°F water and had no problem when my buddy's high end diaphragm freeflowed. 4. Even when doing milfoil remediation pulling mats I never had a problem, and when I clean them there's nothing inside - I do rinse well though.
CAPTAIN SINBAD
Contributor
The only pistons I would trust in cold muck are environmentally sealed Atomics. Normally I would go with sealed Diaphragms.
Diaphragm. There are some inexpensive diaphragm regs out there. Although there are a few relatively economical piston regs, the high-end regs are mostly piston. Comparing the mechanical designs, I can see why it might be more economical to manufacture a diaphragm reg--tolerances, etc.--than a high-end piston reg. Also, diaphragm regs can readily be sealed for cold water use (or contaminated water, if that's a consideration), whereas sealing a piston reg is a more complex affair. It has also been posited in other threads that a sealed reg used regularly in saltwater might not require such fastidious rinsing/soaking; sounds reasonable, but I don't know.
Lastly--and this is something I was told by a diaphragm reg manufacturer in their reg service course but which was called out as BS when I mentioned it in another thread--I was told that piston regs deliver the exceptional performance for which they are known when they are in tune, but that they need to be tuned more frequently than diaphragm regs to maintain that exceptional level of performance. In other words, as I understood it, the thinking was that a diaphragm reg performs just as well as a poorly tuned piston reg, and there are a lot of poorly tuned piston regs out there because people don't tune them frequently enough. Again, I pass this along only because I heard it myself from a reg service instructor; SB'ers whose knowledge I trust have said this is false.
Just a few of dozens of previous threads:
Piston vs diaphragm first stage?
Why Piston vs. Diaphragm???
Balanced Diaphragm or Piston ?
Piston vs. Diaphragm?
Diaphragm vs. Piston Regulators
Piston Diaphragm ??? What
To Diaphragm -OR- To Piston... that is the newbie question for a regulator
Piston vs diaphragm... Balanced??
Lastly--and this is something I was told by a diaphragm reg manufacturer in their reg service course but which was called out as BS when I mentioned it in another thread--I was told that piston regs deliver the exceptional performance for which they are known when they are in tune, but that they need to be tuned more frequently than diaphragm regs to maintain that exceptional level of performance. In other words, as I understood it, the thinking was that a diaphragm reg performs just as well as a poorly tuned piston reg, and there are a lot of poorly tuned piston regs out there because people don't tune them frequently enough. Again, I pass this along only because I heard it myself from a reg service instructor; SB'ers whose knowledge I trust have said this is false.
Just a few of dozens of previous threads:
Piston vs diaphragm first stage?
Why Piston vs. Diaphragm???
Balanced Diaphragm or Piston ?
Piston vs. Diaphragm?
Diaphragm vs. Piston Regulators
Piston Diaphragm ??? What
To Diaphragm -OR- To Piston... that is the newbie question for a regulator
Piston vs diaphragm... Balanced??
Bob DBF
Contributor
Same reason I like the Sherwood reg with their air bleed system. I must admit the old Posiedon Cyclon 300 I picked up is getting more use now than I expected. I started diving a while back and if a reg gives me air when I want it I'm not as picky as a lot of divers seem to be now.
Bob
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