This week’s gear review: The Zeagle Rezort Regulator In order to fully appreciate why this regulator is so cool one first must know the whole story. As a company Zeagle takes great pride in the fact that they manufacture everything they sell. With exception to their slim selection of masks and snorkels: they are made elsewhere. About 6 years ago Zeagle was using Apex as a supplier of regs, and putting their name on them. This is known as “farming” and is quite commonplace with many of today’s SCUBA manufacturers (see next weeks editorial on the subject). But when they decided to expand into the regulator market they needed to hire a pro designer that would be able to create their new line. Enter Jim Fox: Jim had been the chief designer/engineer for Sherwood SCUBA since the early 80’s. He had designed Sherwood’s simple but reliable piston first stages, regulators which to this day have the reputation of being the world’s best rental reg. Only Scuba Pro’s Mark II / R190 is thought of in the same category. Jim had been given the opportunity to design a high performance diaphragm lineup for Zeagle. He was rubbing his creative hands together with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth like a mad scientist. Well maybe not that excited but you get the idea. After building Volkswagen beetles for 18 years he finally got to build a Porsche. The Zeagle Flat Head regulator, its smaller cousins Envoy and DS5 regs have established a reputation of being some of the best high performance Cold water regs in the world. So six years go by, and Zeagle has decided to expand their line once again. Being a Zeagle “freak”, I was stoked when I heard that they were unveiling a new reg at the DEMA show (diving equipment marketing assoc). With great anticipation, I sat at my table with Bryan during the Zeagle clinic awaiting our first look. Zeagle’s lineup was missing something and they were unable to tap into the world’s rental reg market until now. When Zeagle’s marketing dept asked Jim if he could build them a reliable yet high performance piston first stage he said, “um duh… I wrote the book”. The Resort is an amazing regulator when you consider what its designed for and what it can do. When we rebuilt the regulator for the first time at the show, Jim showed us what he had done. Every single surface inside this reg is smooth as glass, rounded corners, no sharp edges. It is designed to minimize flow restriction, even the yoke mounted filter is designed to allow air flow better than previous designs. Piston regulators are not known for their abilities as ice diving regs - but this one has characteristics of those that are. With exterior heat synch fins and large brass body, its mated with a balanced adjustable envoy second stage and is available in both yoke and DIN. This unit is simple perfection. The other amazing thing about this reg is the price: it retails for less than $400 bucks. CHEAP!! needless to say I am slowly phasing it into my rental department. Wanna try one out?? Come down to the store and take one for a test dive, they are in stock now. “Breathe Continuously” Dan Sidney Dive n Surf |