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Okay, I do not know very much about all the companies and who owns who and stuff so I need a little help. This guy at an LDS told me that all the head Scubapro engineers left in like 1995 to form Atomic and that now all Scubapro regs are attempted copies of Atomic stuff. He was laying into Scubapro pretty bad saying they were all crap and Uwatec too. He had like a shrine to Atomic regs in his store and said they were the best in the world. Just looking to see if the guy is trying to get me to buy his stuff or if he actually telling the truth. Thanks.
A year ago I was in the same place you are now. It's a tuff spot.
The guy you're talking to is trying HARD to sell you his product. It's unfortunate.
Atomic makes a good reg, ScubaPro too. After all the research I did, I went with Apeks. Guys around here swear by their ScubaPro - what you were told about them being inferior is complete Cow Pile.
Do a search on this forum. There is a lot of info here. Read a lot. Try and stay away from people who say you only have 1 choice - that is rarely if ever the case.
Best of luck.
Last edited by UWSojourner; February 17th, 2004 at 01:50 AM.
I'm more than a little biased but I like Scubapro regs. I worry about anyone who says that brand X is great and everything else is crap.
As far as I know the story about former SP engineers going to atomic is true. But while some of the designs are very similar, I would not say that one is attmepting to copy the other.
ScubaPro regs require a bunch of special tools to service...Atomic regs require even more. The probably perform about the same...not a whole lot of difference. I serously doubt that anyone could tell the difference between the two. If the guy was a Mares dealer, he would be saying they were the greatest reg in the world instead.
I own a bunch of ScubaPro regs, but have been thinking about going to Apeks simply because they do not require any special tools to service.
I have a friend who used to work on both regs and said that the atomic was so close to the scubapro (forgot which model number) it was scary... He said they were almost identical in design. Regardless, I love my atomic Z1 and the only problem I've had with it was/is the stupid adjustment knob fell off on a dive! But its ok I'm diving it still until the shop gets a replacement in.