I have to service my own because I'm a Poseidon diver and finding a competent tech that knows how to tune the damn things is almost impossible. I know of 3 outside of the cave and technical community. For us it is actually a matter of convenience more than anything, if I have a HP seat blow while I'm cave diving, thank you Hog, twice on brand new regulators..... then instead of having to take them to a shop, pay $100 and get them back in a couple days, I can sit there after dinner and rebuild them. Don't have to rent gear, don't have to worry about missing out on any more than half a day of diving. Hell if it happened after the morning dive, service at lunch, be back at it in the afternoon.
Hog more than anyone has proven that the concept is there but the execution is flawed. They provided the parts kits freely to the consumer, well so was Dive Rite, Zeagle, Poseidon, Atomic I believe, but they didn't write a manual. It wasn't until it was written for them that we had a proper manual for it and that caused a lot of people to chew their HP seats up before the reg was even pressurized for the first time. Providing parts is only half the battle, providing the manuals is the other.
You said one of your personal favorites was all regs are the same, well most of the first stages out there actually are pretty damn close and if you have been trained to service one properly, you can service a great amount of them if you have half a brain. One of the problems with Hog was people were assembling them backwards, following the Dive Rite manual, if they had followed the Apeks manual they would have been fine, and the Dive Rites can be assembled in that order and be just as happy. Same goes for the Hollis regs. So that takes care of the "I copied the Apeks DST/DS4 design" balanced diaphrags, Hollis/Dive Rite/Hog/Zeagle/Aqualung. Poseidons have their own weird bit, but you can get their manuals and parts pretty easily and they are very well written. The damn pistons are the problem children, and servicing those is a colossal pain. I will grab any of the modern diaphragms and with the Apeks manuals in front of me be very confident in being able to service most of them properly. I won't go anywhere near pistons unless I have that specific manual in front of me, especially if it has Scubapro written on it. Nothing particularly nasty about them, but every one of them is different enough to be woogidy.
I still maintain the industry went to their current parts rules BS to keep the dive shops in business, comparable to the agencies adding specialty courses and a whole bunch of other stuff. They could just have easily said, sure here's the parts and manuals, and prior to things like scubaboard, most recreational guys would still get their regs serviced by the shops, same thing with cars and mechanics. Parts are available, Chiltons manuals are widely available, but people still go to the shop to get lightbulbs changed, oil changed, brakes done etc because they couldn't be bothered to do it themselves. You'll still get people that want to do it themselves, and if they fubar their reg, well it's their own fault, go get another one and don't do that again. Most people shouldn't service their regs, it requires special tools that aren't cheap, especially the ultrasonics if you're diving in salt water, just had to get a new one, not cheap. If you dive SP's, there's apparently custom tools that you have to buy *one of the other reasons I like Apeks and their clones, you can walk into a Harbor Freight and literally buy everything you need to service them except the IP gauge, Poseidon too technically but you have to buy a bench grinder to grind the wrench down*
I do almost all of my own work on my vehicles, both classic and modern, I do all of my own work on my dive gear, reg rebuilds, can light cord replacements, etc, same as I do most of my own home repairs, but similar to the BP/W prevalence on this board, this is a small section of the diving population and while it seems like so many repair their own regs on this board, and so many dive BP/W's etc, as of now there are 43541 registered users on SB, PADI pumped out 936,149 certifications in 2013, and they represent about 50% market share. Granted that is total certs, not new divers, but if only 5% of those certs were new divers, that is still more new certifications than there are members on this board..... Obviously most of those won't purchase their own regulator sets, but even still, the problem with forums like this is that it represents a very small group of individuals, most of whome are very passionate about what they do which is why we participate, and because of that, you see a small representation of the whole and have to base your thoughts on that small representation. If you a manufacturer took a poll for what equipment to keep producing and based their product line on the general consensus here, AI would basically go away, non BP/W's would go away, yoke valves would go away, and split fins would go away. Obviously the manufacturers are selling a boat load of all of them because they keep coming out with new versions every year, so while this group may represent a large percentage of divers who service their own gear, it is still a very small representation of the diving community as a whole.
sued out of you for doing so negligently and thereby proximately causing accidents/deaths. Next ill-considered comparison, please.
