If only there was a way to "bypass" these issues and find a metal second that could passively reduce inhalation resistance without increasing tendency to freeflow.
It could look like this:
View attachment 580241
[ducks]
I wish Greg Barlow was still contributing here. We could then have an American representing the Italian Mares versus Angelo Farina representing the American SP.
??? The 109-156 were manufactured here in Italy at Casarza Ligure. I visited the factory in 1977, where I was trained about assembling and tuning them, and servicing them periodically.
Many other Scubapro models are Italian. You know that the letter at beginning of the regulator name is meaning the engineer who designed it:
A - Alberto Belloni
C - Corrado Cominetti
R - Roberto Semeia
D - Doug Toth
G - Dean Garaffa
S - Roberto Semeia
From the name I guess that only D and G are American. However, the D series has always been manufactured here, at least since D-300.
How do you see where each item was manufactured? Usually on modern ones, in plastic, it is engraved in the mold, so you can read "made in Italy" or "made in USA". The latest D420, for example, are all Made in Italy.
Coming back on topic to the old brass-chrome models, the way of understanding where they were manufactured is in the two small screws closing the ring around the reg. In Italian-made samples these two small screws are metric (M3x0.5, for being precise).
In the US-made samples these screws are in Imperial units, a bit larger, they do not screw in Italian regs.
Last note: saying that Scubapro is American and Mares is Italian has little meaning in the modern global world. Mares was owned by AMF since the seventies, and Scubapro-Uwatec is actually a company registered in Germany, at least here in Europe, despite the factory is in Italy... In the US, it is known that the control shares of Scubapro-USA are owned by Johnson - Outboard Marine Corp. (aka OMC)... But who owns Johnson? Bombardier, who is Canadian!
It is a complex and intricated mess of shares, and it becomes really difficult to understand who is owner, and if a company is of a given nationality...
