Seaquest Mirage...Balanced or not

[crawford]

I have been given two different answers on whether my Seaquest Mirage regulators are balanced or not. When I bought them, I was told they are in fact balanced piston regs, that should work fine at any depth within recreational limits.

Read a post on this site that said differently.

Also, anyone that is an expert on these regs, what are the limitations for the Seaquest Mirage (both first and second stage) regs (depth, cold, etc.).

 

[neil]

The Mirage is an UNbalanced piston reg. It is unbalanced because the piston seat directly closes against the orifice, behind which is tank pressure. This means that tank pressure has an effect on opening effort, which in essence defines "balanced" in a scuba regulator. When the tank pressure is high, the valve opens more easily than when pressure is low.

How this affects performance is another story. It MIGHT work fine at any recreational depth. The Mirage was never marketed as a high performance reg. It is however very simple and rugged, and I worked in a shop where we had a few in rental that stood up very well to lots of use. It's depth limitations depend a lot on you: your breathing rate, size etc. but it's definityly NOT a high perf. reg. I wouldn't go ice diving with it either.

Neil