Vintage vs. Modern

[superstar]

The far right and far left are way too extreme for me. My gear is more center left.

 

[aquaregia]

I was once center-left, but as I age I seem to be tending more center-right

 

[CT-Rich]

Am I right that the double hose she is wearing is not period? that looks like silicone. In any case, she does wear it well.

 

[simonbeans]

She was using my Original Voit 50 Fathom regulator. You are correct the hoses are repro silicone, but the mouthpiece and the chrome Tinnerman clamps are original. We who dive vintage, especially at this event, feel some of the recent reproductions are correct even though we use silicone verses the neoprene rubber of the original hoses. To produce the gray color that Voit used, clay was added to the compound. Unfortunately this clay was the primary reason that the gray hoses perished in the past 50+ years.

 

[Nemrod]

Am I right that the double hose she is wearing is not period? that looks like silicone. In any case, she does wear it well.

If we could only use service items made in the day then all of these regulators and equipment would be gathering dust on shelves and boxes in atics. The original neoprene hoses, especially the yellow and gray (colored) ones, just simply did not hold up. Diagrams have dried out and cracked and are no longer safe to dive. The silicone replacement parts not only faithfully reproduce misspelled words (Voit hourglass mouthpiece, IN was reversed to NI) and have seam lines and parting lines, they are more durable and safer to use and great effort has been made to keep the colors at least close to original. The harnesses are made by Allan and I swear it is difficult to tell them from the originals once they fade a bit. In this case, close is damn near exact and within the variation that was original and expected in the day.

N