Scubapro Regulator Museum - Every Scubapro Reg Ever Made

[ZoCrowes255]

The shop I work for, the Louisville Dive Center, is now home to the most comprehensive collection of Scubapro regulators anywhere in the world. If you've been to Ocean Divers in Key Largo you may have seen this display before. It has every Scubapro regulator ever made and sold in the USA as well as a few other rare vintage pieces from other manufacturers.

The collection is owned and maintained by Kenny Wheeler and Harry Ward of Scubapro USA. Their website HomeMUSEU has quite a bit more information including schematics for every single Scubapro reg and a pretty comprehensive history of Scubapro equipment.

Anyhoo I busted out my camera and took a few shots and thought I would post some of them for those interested. Click the images for hi-res

More of my photos of the museum can be found here:
Louisville Dive Center's Photos - Scubapro Regulator Museum | Facebook


Initially the Scubapro name was an attempt by the discount Scuba company Healthways to produce a high end professional regulator. The Healthways Scubair J was rebranded as a Scubapro Scubair J.


Unfortunately for Healthways they went bankrupt a few months after the launch of the Scubapro line. The "Scubapro" name was then bought by Gustave de la Valle and his business partner, the men responsible for the Scubapro name, for $1. Thus Scubapro was born.


The Scubapro Pilot which, according to the US Navy, is the best deep diving regulator they have ever tested. Too bad it's been out of production since the early 1980's.


Prototypes for the Scubapro Pilot in color variants. The blue is one of a kind. There are only three white pilots in existence.


Gold plated MK10/G250 to commemorate the G250 as the best selling regulator of all time.


More of the collection including the horrible G250 cover variants from the mid-90s. Those things were ugly!


The Bend-O-Matic, one of the first dive computers


A whole row of G250s, quite possibly the best reg ever made


Kenny getting the display setup

 

[legions]

Zocrowes255, What's your opinion of the sb pilot, beside it being complicated. I presently dive one now and I believe it to be the best breathing reg ever made. I know it to breath easier than my a700.

Also I am aware of it's origin.

Cheers

 

[HenrikBP]

That's very cool. Thanks for posting the info. Especially the diagrams will be a help for us "end users".

Now where do I sign up to come down and take them all diving

Henrik

 

[Captain Larry]

Great to see that the collection has found a good home. We miss Kenny down here in Key Largo. An excellent collection.

 

[ZoCrowes255]

Zocrowes255, What's your opinion of the sb pilot, beside it being complicated. I presently dive one now and I believe it to be the best breathing reg ever made. I know it to breath easier than my a700.

Also I am aware of it's origin.

Cheers

I've never had the opportunity to dive the Pilot myself. One of the owners/main gear tech used to dive a Pilot back in the late 70s with a MKVII which he still has. He has hoarded a few parts kits and hopefuly I will get a chance to dive it myself eventually. The only complaint I have ever heard regarding them is how complicated they can be to service.

Scubapro actually has a certificate hanging on the wall at Tech Services out in CA presented to them by the US Navy. The plaque pretty much says the Pilot is the greatest reg ever made.

That's very cool. Thanks for posting the info. Especially the diagrams will be a help for us "end users".

Now where do I sign up to come down and take them all diving

Henrik

I am actually surprised they hosted all those schematics online. All but they Healthways branded Scubapros are actually in diveable condition. Kenny restored them so that all of them are diveable. There are some really interesting prototypes and non-production regs I would like to take for a spin.

Great to see that the collection has found a good home. We miss Kenny down here in Key Largo. An excellent collection.

I'm going to miss visiting Kenny in the Keys. I'll see him more often now but it was under much warmer (temperature wise) circumstances.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The Pilot was used at 1800' by the Navy in test dives. That is 55.54 atmospheres. So if you have a pretty good SAC of .6, that is still 33 SCFM per minute and when you consider that you are only inhaling perhaps 20 seconds per minute on average, that requires a flow rate of nearly 100 SCFM.

The Pilot is capable of impressive performance and is arguably the highest performing second stage ever made. Plus, the angled diaphragm and combination exhaust valve and diaphragm allowed very low cracking efforts that were not affected by case geometry fault.

I have one in very minty condition and it performs very well, but is comparatively complex to service and is very touchy in terms of adjustments. The Pilot also has a tendency to stutter in some circumstnaces at shallow depths at low inhalation rates and adjusting that trait out is also a pain.

Because of those service related issues, the Pilot was only proiduced in 1977 and early 1978 and was replaced by the by the Air 1 - the same basic design but in a plastic case and utilizing a center balanced valve rather than a pilot valve. Not long after that, Scubapro released a conversion kit to replace the Pilot internals with Air 1 internals. The Air 1 is also an excellent performing second stage, although I doubt it would perfrom all the way down to 1800'. However, the center balanced valve design is much easier to adjust and is more reliable in service, so in my opinon the Air 1 is a superior reg for 99.99% of the divers out there, and a converted Pilot is still a very nice reg to have.

The Air 1, like the Pilot also had fairly limited access to the inside of the case, The diaphragm/exhaust valve used in the Pilot and Air 1 was retained at the bottom by clip and installing and removing one was a lot harder than the average second stage and if not done correctly could result in a hole in the diaphragm. That is problematic now as those diaphragms are no longer made.

The D300 used the same internal parts as the Air 1 but put the diaphragm on the front rather than the back and used a co-axial exhaust valve so the D series was drier breathing than the Pilot and Air 1 in some positions, but offered the same low cracking efforts in the .5 to .6" of water range. It was also much easier to service, which is why it led to the D350 and D400 and remained in production and available until about mid 2004. The D series also had a dive/pre-dive switch that made sense as dive was down and surface was up. It was backwards on the Pilot and Air 1.

The PIlot and Air 1 were however fully reverseable. On the Pilot youi remove a cap on the left side, pull out an o-ring sealed plug and then install the LP hose. The plug and cap then go on the other side. On the air one, there is just a cap with a rubber gasket in the end, but it is also a simple 1 minute conversion to change it from a right side LP hose to a left side LP hose. If Scubapro did something like that now, they'd sell a lot of regs to side mount divers.

In terms of parts I still have a new Pilot to Air 1 conversion kit as well as a couple new diaphragms and a very small supply of some Pilot parts, but for the most part, operational Pilots and to a lesser extent Air 1's are an endangered species.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

More of the collection including the horrible G250 cover variants from the mid-90s. Those things were ugly!

The Hot Covers were pretty cool and are still very collectable. Personally I like them and wish Scubapro would do something similar with the G250V. "Ugly"s a word better applied to the newer SP covers like the A700 and S600. All lines rivies and edges with no grace and damn little style.

The Hot Covers were hand painted in 5 styles and the paint was applied on top of the clear covers used in the clear G250 variant.

When you look at the Balanced Adjustable and G250 evolution as well as the Pilot/Air 1/D300,350,400 evolution and consider it all happended in the late 1970s to early 1990's - and then consider get away from the herd things like Hot Covers, it is apparent that Scubapro, and the OC scuba industry as a whole was at it's peak then with not a whole lot worth mentioning happening since. It's pretty sad.

 

[ZoCrowes255]

The Hot Covers were pretty cool and are still very collectable. Personally I like them and wish Scubapro would do something similar with the G250V. "Ugly"s a word better applied to the newer SP covers like the A700 and S600. All lines rivies and edges with no grace and damn little style.

The Hot Covers were hand painted in 5 styles and the paint was applied on top of the clear covers used in the clear G250 variant.

Nice info on the Pilot and we are just going to have to agree to disagree on the Hot Covers. To me they look like someone vomited neon paint everywhere.

Of course I dislike most industrial design from the late 80s until now. Give me the design of the chrome Balanced Adjustable any day of the week.

 

[legions]

Thanks DA Aquamaster for the info. Everything you stated I have experienced. I also read where the navy stated that, if need be, you could attach two independent first stages to the pilot. I know how complicated it is, but I would still like to see sb come out with a anniversary addition or comparable. I own three, one, air one conversion, and two pilots.

By the way....you wouldn't happen to have sb part no.01-020-113 kicking around, would you.

Cheers

 

[legions]

By the way, that 1800 foot dive was operation deep dive, where the navys experimental dive unit supported five or six divers on the pilot. I do not believe the feat has ever been matched.