Well, it's out. I had the pleasure of listening to Dean Garraffa introduce AA's new second stage (and tweaked T3 first stage), and I can't wait to get my hands on one. Mr. Garraffa was with Scubapro back in the day, and along with Doug Toth (who designed the D400), they came over and formed Atomic Aquatics and created a scuba manufacturing company with a quality niche that few can match.
Where to start?
For those of us old enough, the center-balanced second stage valve design has held sway for longer than the current barrel design second stage valve. Smaller spring forces; lower possible cracking effort; it had the potential for effortless breathing. But the complexity of Tony Christianson's record setting Pilot regulator valve drove a search for a simpler design.
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The Pilot and the Air1 that followed had great valves, but could be wet breathers with their untethered upper diaphragm edge. And so Doug Toth's D300, D350 and D400 took the low-cracking-effort lead and were the regs I first started diving with (attached to a Mk10). To say that they were a challenge to service is a bit of an understatement, and my first service disaster with the technician perforating my diaphragm drove me early on into DIY. I may have thousands of dollars in D-series spares which I now believe will be obsolete.
If you look at the TFX valve, the similarity with the D400 is hard to ignore.
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Scubapro returned decades after abandoning the D400 with their D420, and the excitement amongst the center-balanced community was palpable. With a plastic knife edge that is replaced with each service, the D420 obviated the one nagging problem with the old D's: a knife edge that was easily nicked, requiring significantly more seating force to seal. Now you'd get a new knife edge with each (very expensive) service kit.
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But the D420 departed in a big way from the D400: it got rid of the coaxial diaphragm/exhaust valve in favor of a standard "aft" placement of a larger valve that assisted exhalation WOB, and made for a great ANSTI loop. Indeed, on my deep water test of the D420, it's exhalation breathing performance was superior to my fave - the D400. Alas, it required a 1.3" cracking effort because the exhalation valve was so much higher in the water column than the diaphragm, and out of the water, it breathes like a pig. But no matter - once in the water, inspiratory effort drops to near zero, and it's a pleasure to use.
Until you roll on your back. If you're a photographer and look up shooting under a ledge, it's not a great reg. My D400 was far preferable because it didn't care what position it was in. But few folks can get the D400 reg serviced, even fewer have spares, and getting the "scrotum" cover off the case has made for a lot of bad jokes.
Enter the TFX. Take everything you love about a center-balanced design concept, and make it better!
1) In true Atomic fashion, the internals are titanium;
2) take that center balanced valve and machine it Atomic-style; in other words,
perfectly;
3) take the knife edge orifice and return it to that sharp edged beauty that allows a cracking effort of 0.5";
4) make the orifice replaceable inside the valve housing, so it costs less;
5) make the orifice
floating! Now the pressure comes off when the reg isn't pressurized, and seat longevity increases exponentially;
6) make the case easy to open up - hooray;
7) and unlike the D420, RETURN TO A COAXIAL DIAPHRAGM/EXHAUST (with a bigger valve)!
Now all we have to do is teach two generations of regulator techs how to work on a center-balanced design again.
But there's more.
I've screen-grabbed some shots from the introductory videos that have been released and want to show why I think this will make my D400 (not to mention my new D420) obsolete.
