knowone, what's a "swivel"? Can you send a picture?
To technical for me, however I must learn because there would be less reason for babbling if I could answer with a photo. It's an elbow that fits between the hose and the second, allows more streamlined routing and eases mouth stretch.
Some of the hoses I use are forty years old in perfect condition. Not forty years used old, just QUALITY hoses luckily stored correctly and some stored incorrectly, just really good hoses made with good ingredients.
Some of the hoses on my tech gear I have been using for TWENTY years.
I never use hose protectors on tech gear.
Even after bulk rough use, the only time I change a hose is to reconfigure or change length. I think I stopped using hose protectors 10 years ago on other stuff. I have some original protectors on some older regs.
I have 100 or more hose protectors in bags in a box. I keep original ones because they are original and the others because I just can't bring myself to file them and when I am looking for one to match another one or two it is interesting to see the fancy colours and some of the rubbish designs from over the years.
The green crust muck and erosion of chrome leading to rubber degradation that develops between first stage crimp and hose due to a PROTECTOR causes eventual UNNESSESARY failure in multiplied opposite proportion to any protection it may afford.
I remove all unecessary plastic bits, the bit between the din yoke and body bit and cages and rings and stickers and caps and dust caps, my dust is to big and sinter proof and wrap tape around my seconds because I like it. If the thing between the first body and attachment device is chrome like on late SP Mk Vs it is left on because it looks good.
Hoses wreck if regs are stored hung or in a dumb ass reg bag that is to small. Imagine sleeping standing on one foot for six months.
Congatulations ti325v on your impending dive shop. It must be exciting.
I have four of those low pressure hoses you describe that fold flat distorted in half. They seem to come as standard on real low end generics and as cheap replacement hoses. I think I first saw them appear here maybe seven years ago and I still shake my head. They are quite capable of bending flat in half even with a protector. Perhaps this is deliberate so people quickly swap out for the cheesy flash expensive ones. The four of mine were passing briefly through my hands with regs connected. I still have the 4 hoses in my will never be used but could eventually be used for something department-boxes because even though I sold the sets and even though it cost me, I would never sell or use those hoses.
Perhaps, if you still have time you could look into hose options for all your shop regs, just check and you may be able to offset the price with cheaper hose protectors.
Not to push the hose thing, I would rather dive a quality hose with the outer casing ripped off or the average original hose I have on a reg manufactured in 1955.
Best wishes to all.
It's not sport, it's life support?