Suggestions for replacement first stages (disposable or user serviceable)

[ams511]

The first stage had a few drops of water and a mess of lube in it and no corrosion... Wipe it out dry it off, apply a tiny bit of grease to the O-ring, slap it together, check the intermediate pressure and then dive with it...see what happens before you put any more effort into it.. I bet it will work fine.

The problem is the dry-bleed doesn't work. In the past people have mentioned that if the dry-bleed doesn't work then the first stage will not adjust properly to ambient pressure especially for rapid changes of depth. I think the theory behind these regs are that the water pressure holds the air inside the regulator until the air pressure is IP over ambient. If it doesn't compensate then the IP pressure will drop the deeper you go and the regulator would be harder to breath.

---------- Post added January 30th, 2015 at 01:56 PM ----------

You might be, I don't know. I know some of them had a balancing feature that put the orifice on a spring washer to compensate for decreasing IP as the tank emptied. I just assumed not all of them were sealed, but I certainly could be wrong.

All the ones I mentioned are sealed. I seen some photos of some older ones such as the 3100 that look to be unsealed. All the ones I mentioned have the spring block over the orifice to balance the regulator with the exception of the Brut. The Brut is unbalanced using regular washers instead of the Belleville kind. I am more familiar with the older ones with the filter in the piston rather than the newer ones.