what to buy?

hello fellows divers. i need advice on buying eqipment. i,m very new to scuba diving. just signed up to take the open water course. and i have been into my local scuba store and checking the internet for equipment. and the choices and prices are endless!! can anyone give advice on what to buy. i need everything from a bcd to a reg , wet suit, mask and finns. i really dont feel like spending $3000.00 or more.
any help would be great.....thanks

Most courses require you buy mask, fins, snorkel, booties before the class. I would also buy a good-fitting wetsuit in a thickness suitable for your OW checkout dives. My next purchase would be a BC as a poor fitting one can sour your diving experience. You can rent regulators just about anywhere, sometimes with a computer. My personal philosophy is to own anything that has to fit to your body rather than take the chance of renting poor fitting gear.

My advice would be, don't be in such a hurry. Lots of us when we were in your position bought stuff that, sooner or later, we wished we hadn't. Some have it collecting dust in a closet, others of us took a bath eBay-ing it so we could offset part of the cost of getting what we should've bought to begin with. Rent different types of equipment or borrow others stuff if you can until you have enough experience with it to know what you'll really want.

The only thing you should need for your class is mask, fins, maybe a wetsuit.

That said, based solely on my experiences with rental regs the first thing I would buy after that is a quality reg set. Something timetested and bulletproof, not something with the latest widget on it.

yes i do need the mask and finns. and i,ll get them at the local scuba store. before i go into the pool. we are planning a trip late in the year to jamica so i,ll probably get the wet suit for that climate. would a 3 mm suit do for diving in the great lakes in the summer?

thanks stsomewhere. thats good advice. my closests are already full of stuff i dont use anymore!!
just wondering on brand names are they all the same for quality and servicablity?
which ones are better? i have been looking at scubapro lately. the knighthawk bcd. and the 600 reg.

With warm water diving plans, I don't think you need a $600 regulator. I dive a $229 Zeagle Envoy to the limits of recreational diving and am pleased with the performance.

You will need a thick wetsuit to dive the Great Lakes. If you only plan to use it during your checkout dives, I would rent it, as much as I dislike renting wetsuits.

3MM would be good down to about 70 degrees or so depending on your cold tolerance. For colder water, you might consider renting a farmer john 5 MM that will give you more neoprene on the trunk of your body. Once you get cold, you will stay cold. A 3MM is better for tropical water that is in the mid 70's or so, once again dependng on your cold tolerance. Water takes heat out of our bodies much faster than air.

One thought about dive equipment. It is not just a toy, it is life support equipment you use in a potentially hostile environment, like 60 ft. underwater. I have always used the rule of thumb to buy the higher end of the middle range of products. You get the features you need but a reg, for instance, does not need to be made out of titanium to be reliable, functional, and last a good long while. Unreliable cheap equipment is not a bargain.

Almost ALL modern regulators are reliable in tropical waters. I've taken a $99 Mares Axis to over 100 feet and it performed flawlessly. Regulators can become unreliable from lack of care and service.

And there is the slippery slope. If you want gear for warm and cold water, that's different from someone who only dives twice a year in Cozumel. As others have said, a 3mm suit isn't much good past 70°-ish, personally I'd even say colder than 75° is borderline for adding a hooded vest or going to a 5mm suit but that depends partly on you and how your body copes with the cold. I have a 7/6mm suit for local diving and a 3/2mm for the Keys, and am thinking of adding a 5/4mm for what passes for winter in Florida. If I dove regularly in Puget Sound or the Great Lakes I'd have already bought a drysuit, but now we are talking serious coin and rentals should be the order of the day before you go that route. See how you can nickle-and-dime yourself into spending big bucks without realizing it?

As far as coldwater regs go, I like Apeks as they are basically bulletproof. The DS4 first stage, maybe the ATX50 second stages or their new XTX100/200 line but stay away from the swivels on the first stage as its far more useless that you would ever imagine. Other good brands I'd consider would be the Zeagles with env seals (the ZX-FlatheadVI or ZX-DSV, not the ZX-50D). Depending on who you ask the piston first stages on the Scubapro regs are either fine for coldwater or will freeflow like crazy, because of that SP has come out with a new diaphram MK17 first stage designed for cold water. My opinion is that a coldwater reg works anywhere, but that isn't necessarily true with warmwater regs. If you like Scubapro then get the MK17 first stage matched with something reasonable for the second stages like the G250HP (you don't need to buy them the way they are bundled in the catalog). PM DA Aquamaster for more advice on SP regs, he works on these all the time and knows them literally inside and out.

:icorolley My buddy and I make 60+ dives a year in Coz. He dives an Apex ATX200 and I dive a Zeagle. Neither of us has perished diving the same profiles. The REAL question is whether or not you NEED a cold water regulator that is environmentally sealed.