The miniature, make-belief,
You don't seem to like Deep 6 and seem surprised when people see you as being "hostile". You posted that these are simply facts, but the verbiage you use has no facts in them. Why call them "make belief" when they actually exist? There is a lot of movement in our industry. Companies, even 'big name' companies have been sold or have gone under.
This is typical of the "if I don't sell, teach or dive it, then it must be junk" mentality. You've made some big claims here, but provide no facts to back them up. How many regulators have you seen fail at 180 feet? Oh, people fail at that depth way before the gear will. You glibly use the fear of death, but really: how many people have died because the reg has failed? You make it sound so common, when I can't attribute a single death to that, much less to any of these "miniature, make belief" companies you keep railing against.
It's my opinion that your fear and the "facts" you refer to are the real make believe in this thread.
I've dove many a reg deep and in caves. There are simply no "bad" regs on the market anymore. I would and have trusted my life to many varieties of regs and the biggest issue for me is not how well they work, but how well they work for me. On my back mount, I simply love the way my Atomic reg hoses lay out. It's perfect and no other reg will route my hoses quite the same way. Sidemounting? Oh, I use Deep6, Dive Rite and/or Hog first stages because of the way the hoses get routed. They are such a joy to use! For my second stages, I really prefer Dive Rite because I like their solution for left and right handed regs. On my SF2 rebreather, I love Apeks regs for the way the hoses are routed... again.
So when you try to figure out the best, look no further than the regs already in your kit. See how the hoses lay. Do they feel right to you. Can you do better? Keep looking at other reg sets that others dive. Once you start looking, you'll begin to get a feel for what's right.
As for the rebuild it yourself controversy. Professionals built the Titanic while amateurs built the Ark. No one is more motivated to get things right in a reg than the person who will be using it. The designs are incredibly simple and once you've learned how to build one, you're close to being able to build most of them. Atomics and Poseidens can be a bit tricky, so there's YouTube to help close that gap. I see getting parts as a real plus. Imagine if I couldn't buy a master cylinder for my 2005 Sprinter? Oh, but it's safety related! Big whoop. The average person, using average care and skills can repair just about anything. Can't understand how to do it? Well, don't disparage those of us who can and will. I won't trust my vehicle or my regs to others. Why? Because I don't want my regs blowing up on me at 200ft or a couple thousand feet back in a cave. See? Unreasoned fear works both ways.
For what it's worth, I have had a reg utterly fail at 60ft. It was my Aqualung Micra First Stage. However, it wasn't the reg at fault, but the fidiot professional who rebuilt it. Yes, he had a diploma from Aqualung, but he still put in a defective diaphragm. and it pulled away from the flange allowing me to try to breathe water at depth. He didn't replace it because he thought my bill was already too high. It was, but his decision, made without asking me, put me at risk. The technician failed me, not the reg. I was aghast paying $200 for the rebuild, but that it failed me on top of that was the real insult. When the diaphragm came in, it was $12 or so. The technician almost didn't sell it to me because he felt that only HE was qualified to install it. There was no way I was going to let him touch my regs again. I've been rebuilding all my regs since.
