What is the Best Dive Reel?

[Dive-aholic]

I 2nd Halcyon, at least as a primary. Check out the pathfinder in this link:

http://www.halcyon.net/guideline/index.shtml

Where I bought it for what I found to be the most reasonable price:

http://www.diversmarket.com/ProductDetail.asp?ProductID=217

 

[Tavi]

My vote goes to Ralph Hood (Underwater Connections).

Jason

Ralph gets my vote too!!
I have 3 of them in different sizes.

 

[dive]

Ralph gets my vote too!!
I have 3 of them in different sizes.

Does Ralph Hood have a web site?

 

[Tavi]

Does Ralph Hood have a web site?

Not that I know of.

Here is his contact info

The Underwater Connection Inc.
219 W. Woodland Dr.
Yorktown Va. 23692
(757) 872-8741

 

[Tavi]

I tried to upload a pic of his reels. The file was to big. If I make it smaller you probably wouldn't see much detail. If you PM me your e-mail I'll try to send it there.

 

[SA Diving Products]

My vote goes to Kent Tooling Diving Products Reels

 

[Dsix36]

My favorite so far it by Light Monkey. An added bonus is that they are right here in Florida and their customer support is awesome. i doubt that you will ever hear anything bad about Light Monkey or their products.

 

[TONY CHANEY]

My vote goes to reef scuba reels also. You can remove the spool underwater to unjam it (I've done it a couple of times) and they have FREE yearly service... for life. Just send it back to them and they replace anything that needs replacing, steam clean it, and send it back to you. I did it once so far and the service was great! Its like a I have a new reel.

Not bashing but simply comparing...I have had the same OMS reel for over 10 years and have used it often in all enviroments, i.e caves, oceans, lakes, quarries etc. Never failed me! About $60.00 USD cheaper than Reef Scuba reels and it has a life time warrenty.
Not saying that it does not happen but I have yet to see a Manta reel with the Spring Loaded AFS (Anti-Free Spool) System in caves. Although they do work great for shooting lift bags. OP might want to add what he / she is intending to use the reel for. Most of us use Salvo finger reels for various jobs like jumps. So I vote for the OMS reels.

 

[NAM001]

There are a lot of aspects to reels. they all have thier problems and benifits, so your use may have to prioritise your concerns. For me I (through my learning curve so far) found that they fouled a lot. Most of those problems were due to operator error. If a reel holds 400 ft its ok to just put 300 on it. The fuller the reel is the more it is subject to fouling as line pays out and reels in when it swells. leave a 1/4 inch of your reel unused. Handle location for me is annoying, Having it on top does not work smoothly for me and i am am going to try some side mounted handles. the top handles will work well but just not for me so far. my verdict is not in as yet on the brake / drag adjustment aspect. even reels from the same maker seem to vary in that department. I found that my dive rite reel as designed makes loosing the brake/tansion screw easy. Some of the reels with the set screw is on the side acts as a brake ( screw inserts into a detention on the side of the reel) and on the handle it is a drag. some of them have a drag washer like thing at the brake location so you tighten the drag til it is locked, I like that better. the screw neverthe less still wll turn out and get lost. I am lookiing at puting some sort of pin through the screw. I havnt tried this yet but i an guessing that a delrin frame should take care of the drag screw loss issue since it has so much more material to back out and a greater turning resistance exixts. many of the reels have a teflon type screw in a thin piece of metel frame. When i took my cavern class the instructor showed me that tieing off the line to a tree and pulling out say 100 ft and re reeling the line in eliminated a lot of line tangling problems. The hard lesson on that was to do it prior to each days dives no matter what and after each use. One day my reel skills will improve to the point i will naturally allow my body movement to cause the line pay out as opposed to moving the reel location and causing a temporary increase pay out rate resulting in a backlash. I have got a lot better at that. Some reels are more forgiving that others in that regard.

 

[lloyd_borrett]

Kent Tooling Diving Products in the UK - Kent Tooling Diving Products - DIVING PRODUCTS AND ACCESSORIES MADE FROM 316 STAINLESS STEEL

I've tried a lot of reels, but these leave everything else for dead.