Aqua Lung Legend vs Legend LX

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

LX, without a moment's hesitation.

Yes, the Venturi alone will help keep a well-tuned second stage from freeflowing at the surface (e.g. in a surf entry).

But that's less than half of the benefit of having adjustable cracking effort.
While It's true that with a well tuned regulator, you won't change the adjustment knob at all for the majority of your dives, there are two additional advantages.
First, on a deeper dive with a lightly tuned regulator that makes all breathing easier, the air you breathe is thicker at depth. Therefore, a lightly tuned reg is more likely to freeflow at depth as the mass of air exiting the valve tends to pull the diaphragm in and hold the valve open. With the MBS, it is a simple twist of the knob to decrease that ease of opening. Yes, it is true, you could accomplish some of the same thing by adjusting the Venturi lever. But that won't fix the second benefit of having an adjustment knob:
Second, as the seat ages on a second stage, the point at which the orifice makes contact and seals the valve digs a little groove in the seat. The depth of that groove is like opening the valve by a fraction of a millimeter. That aging process (generally occurring from three to 12 months after service) may allow a reg to freeflow. With the MBS, You can simply tighten up 1/4 to 1/2 turn on the knob to restore the correct poppet spring tension and continue to dive your reg, instead of having it serviced earlier. The alternative, which most shops employ, is for them to deliberately detune the reg so it breathes slightly harder when it leaves the shop, since they know that six months later the groove in the seat will drop cracking effort to something they would like to have provided you at the outset.
Wouldn't you prefer to have light breathing effort at the beginning, and throughout the life cycle between services? Plus have the benefit of immediate adjustment for the density of air at depth?
For me, there's no benefit to having your shop's 18-year-old newly trained technician determine how easily your reg will breathe, with you having no adjustability at your end. Get the MBS.
 
Interesting - Sounds all fine and dandy but I'm currently diving 800 to 1000 dives a year (depends on where I work) on a reg without MBS and have to this day never felt the need for more adjustment than my venturi knob, so I'm not so sure why I would need it all of a sudden.

My venturi's just on fully open all the time, and I've never had an issue deep - I'm currently working in a RSTC setting, so 40 meters max, but I've used this reg below this, in a French CMAS context, no real issue.
I have my current reg serviced every 12 months (not our shop, we service our own unbalanced regs but send ours to places like Aquamasters for balanced), and this is not likely to change since we now even have a technician in Labuan Bajo or all places - don't know...

I kind of like the idea of keeping things simple as well -
Will give it some thought though, could be useful on remote liveaboards for instance - I get your point... it's just that 200 dollars for a feature that we've never felt the need to this day for feels like a lot.

[ful disclosure: I don't need to change my reg- the missus broke hers, as in too expensive to fix, and we're having someone come over from Europe to Asia in December. Reg set (1st and 2nd) in France is less than half of what I'd pay in Indonesia or Thailand, which is why we're going for a dual upgrade)

Thanks for the input

b
 
I have my current reg serviced every 12 months
^-- This.
Any well-tuned reg is all you need.
Bells and whistles are just that, barring weird or special circumstances (like always diving upside down looking under ledges, but really liking a light crackling effort).
 
Problems solved - the dealer lowered the prices on LXs, which are now cheaper than their plain Legends - It's still a little more than the initial price of the Legend, but only a 30 euros difference so I'm going for the bells and whistle versions :wink:

Thanks again for your input everyone!
 

Back
Top Bottom