Scubapro C300

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I totally agree with you Halocline. I found another G250HP used at 60$. If I buy the newer G250v at 350$ the warranty would make a profit in 8 years (calculated it actually after 7.25 year).

I'll take option one and make another setup. I'll have two setups.
One DIR.
One "normal".

Also, my girlfriend is taking here OW classes, she'll probably take the second set anyways.

I wanted to go doubles or dual Y valve (beuchat one with two dip tubes).
But i should wait til I have enough dives under my belt before I go that route. Classes are expensive and I'm better off making more dives now than more classes.

Thanks for the tips, I'll close the thread at the end of the day if there's no reply.
 
If you get doubles with an isolation manifold now make sure they are of the correct size and weight you'll be using for your training and later dives....talk to your potential instructor.
Don't bother with the Y or H valves.......you won't gain any thing training wise since a proper isolation manifold is different to manipulate.
The older regular G250 is a better beast than the HP.....less plastic.
 
Thanks, for the info.

I think I'll stay single tank for the moment to get better before I go twin tanks.

When I'll do tech classes I'll go double.
 
I've seen the C200 and C300, taken them apart and played with them, but I'm witholding any opinion until I actually get to fully test one - and I am still waiting for the one I ordered from Scubapro to arrive - going on about 6 weeks now.

My concern is that the X650 had issues due to the tabs used to keep the poppet aligned in the air barrel. The early versions had limited clearance between the poppet and air barrel and a piece of sand in the slot could jam the poppet cauing either freeflow or a failure to deliver gas, and even silt and salt build up could seriously raise the WOB. The later style poppet has the wings milled a bit thinner to prevent that, but it was still not an elegant design.

In addition the levers on the X650 were inspected based on a random sample of the production batch and any imperfections in the lever seriously degraded performance.

That's all relevant as the C200/300 air barrel design shares some similar features. The poppet is self aligning in the barrel (like the X650) but uses a square profiled section to align rather than a wings in grooves arrangement. Time will tell whether the new system is less prone to issues in sand and silt.

The lever design is also very similar to that of the X650 - a long curved rod that fits in a pair of circular holes in the air barrel with a flat milled near one end to engage the poppet. There is not much clearance for the rod in the holes in the air barrel, so again it will be interesting to see how well it fairs in sand and silt.

On the plus side, Scubapro does inspect each and every C200/300 lever individually, so the improved QA should alleviate one of the X650 issues.

And, the reg does breathe very well, is very simple in terms of engineering and parts count and has numbers that pretty much blow away any other unbalanced second stage design.

So it has potential, but I want to use it in real world, demanding, digging in sand and silt sidemount types of diving before I commit to it or recommend it to anyone.
 
Well, here's an update on the MK11/C300. I got one and the lever design is simple like the 650. The only issues after putting 35 dives on this thing is that it whistles underwater and there is a spot while breathing that it feels likes it pops and starts to breath easier (darwing in hard on it). Over all it's ok but a far far cry from the great stuff that SP can deliver. My LDS called SP and it seems a number of folks have complained about the under water Lassie whistle. SP is working on it but it may be a while before the SP community sees a fix, I hope not. I think they should have stayed with the 395 2nd stage on the 11. I've seen the inside of the 300 2nd stage, and as an SP tech, they have really disappointed me with the craftsmanship on the C300 2nd stage. IMHO spend another 175 and get a mk17/s600 or mk25/s600, you'll be glad you did. Guess I got a new pool rig.....Here Lassie!
 
I guess I should give an update as well.

Mine has been cave diving in MX and in N FL and that includes some mix dives as well as some very silty and sandy side mount passages.

It's been 100% reliable and Scubapro has obviously incorporated the lessoned learned on the lever and poppet design issues in the X650, the same solutions there have prevented any issues in the C300.

So it is a very reliable low parts count reg that delivers plenty of gas and is very dirt and abuse tolerant. Kudos to Scubapro for that.

On the negative side, it breathes a lot more like a rock than a G250V or S600. My memory may be flawed but the early demo regs I saw and played with from Scubapro really impressed me. The one I finally got from Scubapro (long back order) does not deliver the same performance and I can't see anything "wrong" with the reg.

Now, it's not bad, and it's certainly within spec, it just does not deliver the same tonsillectomy performance I thought I saw earlier and the inhalation effort seems a little higher than it needs to be. i did not expect G250V goodness, but I was hoping for something close and was hoping the C300 would fill the niche vacated by the 109 Adjustable a few decades ago offering near top end performance in a fairly simple unbalanced design. That's not the case, at least with the C300 I got.

Consequently, it's bagged and ready to go on future trips - but as a stage reg. In the line up of back gas and stage regs including half dozen or so 'thank God they brought them back" G250Vs, a half dozen or so ever reliable G250s and a few G200s still soldiering on, the C300 ranks 4th in second stage preference. Probably not a ringing endorsement for a reg that looked to have such promise.
 
i was tempted to get one but after reading your updates, i will hold out....my mk5/BA's are holing up quite well.
 
It's a strange problem for a regulator company when their classic designs outperform the newer models...I guess they need to keep introducing new models to drum up repeat business. I'm happy staying with my MK5s and 10s, balanced adjustables, pilots, and D series. Maybe someone could let me know if they ever truly improve on those. :wink:
 
Personally, I think reg design in general and second stage design in particular peaked in the late 1980s to early 1990s, and that peak occurred with Scubapro designs.

The Mk 10 Balanced Adjustable and slightly later Mk 10 G250 was hard to beat, and with a Mk 10 Plus upgrade the first stage still delivers more than enough gas for any technical diving application and the G250 (along with the G250V) is still a technical diving gold standard - one basically copied by Aqualung in the Legend and in the Apeks second stages as well as Hog and a few other companies in various degrees of quality.

The D400, in it's original pre-1994 metal one piece aspirator and orifice, pre-CE certified configuration was, in my opinion the most awesome production reg ever made, one that offered superb subjective breathing performance - performance not really reflected on WOB charts, given how those are manipulated. Sadly, Scubapro essentially detuned it to meet CE free flow requirements and saddled it with a plastic orifice for reasons unknown, then killed it as it was different and poorly techs had trouble tuning it properly.

The slightly later Mk 20 first stage was great for higher pressure applications, once they worked out the piston and seat bugs and the current Mk 25 offers no significant improvement on the final Mk 20 configuration.

Since then, the only new design that has really impressed me has been the Mk 17, but Scubapro still promotes the Mk 25 as their "flagship" model, in large part in deference to older than dirt dive shop owners who were steeped in the "balanced diaphragm regs are crap" propaganda and still hold that bias.

What has changed since the peak however, is that some other companies have improved and closed the gap that formerly existed. That reality, along with the economic need and the desire to sell new regs to old customers seems to drive the steady march of new models.

Personally, I think that would still be a valid approach, but Scubapro has went through a bad patch of the marketing folks driving the designs rather than divers and engineers and some of the products have been released a bit too soon, and with design goals that don't always adhere to the original meaning of the phrase "deep down you want the best". Smaller isn't always better, there is no substitute for quality and design decisions like the X650 still mystify me as they used the angled diaphragm of the D400, without the co-axial exhaust valve and with no apparently no understanding of how the two interacted to basically eliminate case geometry fault as a problem, given that the location of the exhaust valve in the X650 actually aggravated the problem.

It sounds like a negative but it really isn't as Scubapro produced some truly superb designs a decade or so ahead of the competition and at some point you run into the "where do we go from here?" problem. As noted above, smaller size was one approach but it's not all its cracked up to be and it's hard to improve on "old" designs that were already superb - especially when the company continues to retrofit new developments into the older designs. The Balanced Adjustable and original G250 for example, both benefit from the latest S-wing poppet used in the S600, G250V, etc, so rather than the designs aging into obsolescence, they continued to improve. That is indeed a unique challenge in terms of selling "new" regs.

Consequently, Scubapro is still my favorite company and I would not trade a Mk 17 G250V for anything else currently available from any reg company.
 
There's no question that the functionality of the later bushing system and piston design is a refinement of the MK5/10, although I'm not so sure if it actually changes real-world performance. I am impressed with how long one of my friends' MK20 (with the current composite piston) can last between rebuilds-going on 4 years with zero creep. I doubt my MK10s can go that long, but I also doubt that there's any noticeable difference in dive performance under anything but the most extreme cases. Maybe with HP tanks...

I am in total agreement about the 2nd stage situation. My best breathing 2nd stage is one of my converted pilots, essentially a D series reg in a metal case. The design of the coaxial valve 2nd stages is elegant from an engineering perspective and ideal to dive with. Now that I have a bag of NOS D series poppets, I suspect I'll be happily diving my pilots and D300s for the foreseeable future.

The 109/balanced adjustable is not as 'elegant' from a design perspective, but surely must be considered one of the most successful 2nd stage designs in terms of practicality and long life.
 

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