The only issue im having (not a big prob) is that i cant use any of my gear coz its not the brand that the store sells, but im guessing that this is normal practice when representing a store (i can use there hire gear when diving with them) its really annoying though coz i like my gear.
At my LDS, they ask us to work in the pool in the same type of gear the students use. If I wore my wonderful DSS backplate and wing, it might be harder for a nervous first-dip-in-the-pool student to follow my skills demos. By the same idea, if I wore a weight-integrated BC, I would not be able to demo weight belt skills. If I had my alternate reg integrated into the inflator, I wouldn't have the octo for the air sharing drills.
Of course, we're not required to wear any particular brand. Some shops require you to wear only brands they have, while other shops only ask you to wear the same types of gear the students are wearing. It just so happens that most of my gear is the same brands the shop sells (except my fins, but hey).
I should note, by the way, that my shop's request that we wear the same style gear as the students is something that only applies part of the time. In the pool, we wear the same gear so as not to confuse. When we do checkouts, we spend a day at a freshwater spring and two days in the Gulf of Mexico. For the day at the spring, we wear the same gear as at the pool, and all the skills are evaluated. The following two days out in the Gulf, however, we wear whatever we want. Several of us are in backplates and wings, and I always bring my pony. We've got cave divers, tech instructors, and just ordinary divers like me (who happen to dive cold, freshwater sites enough to have drysuits, backplates, and all that).
The way the shop sees it, by the time we hit the Gulf, the students are qualified divers (having learned the skills and been evaluated on them, both in the pool and in deeper water at the spring). Exposing them to the fact there is more out there than just the jacket BCs and basic gear they've been using is a very good thing. It's basically a tableau of more advanced diving, and it can ignite curiosity in the new divers and whet their appetites for further learning. (It also keeps them from falling into the "This is what I was taught, so everything else is WRONG!" fallacy, since they see the very people who taught them show that more goes into diving gear than just what was covered in the basic class.)
I'm debating with the idea of selling my gear and getting the brand they sell but ill wait a while yet.
The way I see it, selling your gear and buying the "store brand" (*just* to have the store brand) is about the worst possible thing a person can do. Everyone needs to dive away from shop and student obligations sometime, and it's certainly worth having gear that you love for when you're diving for you.
If it comes down to not wanting to use the store's hire gear (rental gear, over here :biggrin
, perhaps you can work out a deal for acquiring your own store brand gear (new or used) at a discount. When you sell gear that really suits you in order to get gear the shop requires for their diving, often your diving suffers. You start slipping into the indentured-servant-of-the-shop mode, where diving becomes something you do "as a job", and you start to lose the fun that you need to be a good leader.
Of course, if you have no particular attachment to your gear (perhaps you bought it just because it was there, or just because it was cheap), there's no harm in ending up in store brand gear. It certainly makes things convenient, but it should be because you really do prefer it. Otherwise, you may have to use their gear, or you may end up with a "work" set and a "play" set, but it's not that bad a place to be.
Personally, I have a "work" config and a "play" config, with the "play" set including wetsuits, drysuit, pony, backplate and wing, and all sorts of other stuff. The "work" set, however, happens to be a complete kit -- BC, reg, etc. When I'm going out for fun diving on my own, I'll invite other divers who don't have a full set of gear. If not having to rent anything makes it cheap enough to get them diving, I've not only gained a buddy for the day, but I've also helped someone gain experience (and for some reason, the more they dive, the more gear they buy, until I can use the "work" set to start pulling another diver into the water). It wouldn't be a bad thing to have two sets.
