I know pictures are worth a thousand words. However I was unable to resize the pics I took of the regulator and the file was too large to allow me to post it. Maybe someone can help me out on how to do this. Anyways I hope I can explain what I have and the brain trust can help me put a name to a regulator I just got.
I saw a grainy picture on Craigslist of a USD double hose regulator that was for sale. The picture only showed one side of the reg. The side where the label should be was not shown. But I could tell that it had a had a short yoke with the older style unmarked yoke screw and a snubbed off hookah port. The seller lived in another state and when I talked to the seller about buying it he refused to mail it and insisted on a local pick up. A road trip was out of the question and I could not budge the seller to ship it despite my best effort.
The seller told me there was no label on it. I figure it had been removed or had gotten knocked off at some point. Of course, like all old regulators it supposedly came from the estate of a navy diver. But the seller told me that his friends mother had some of her deceased husband's dive gear and he though the stuff was cool. She let him take a Mk V helmet and a double hose reg. He said he made a nice stand for the helmet and put a light inside it. After keeping it for some years she came by one day and asked for the helmet back as she just learned it was valuable. She let him keep the Aqualung. I began to think maybe it had belonged to a navy diver after all.
I asked what the label said and he told me there was no label on it. I asked him to remove the dust cap and tell me what color the sintered filter was. He told me it looked like brass as did the circlip. I thought that it might possibly be a non-mag although the picture of the reg made it look chrome plated. I did not ask him to look for low MU proof marks as I did not wish to educate him. After pleading my case and asking it to be shipped he politely told me no way.
A few weeks passed and I saw it was still for sale and this time the ad stated "Shipping extra." He had no luck selling the reg locally and he agreed to ship it to me. The next week as I was leaving the house on a road trip that would keep me away from home for a while I saw the package on my porch. I tossed it in my vehicle and decided to wait until I got to the hotel that night before opening it. It was kind of like being a kid on Christmas eve wondering what I might have.
As I unwrapped it, the first thing I saw was the early style curved Aqualung mouth piece. The hoses were in decent shape. The screen and circlip were gold plated and looked just like my other non-mag screens, but I saw no low mag proof mark and it made me wonder if I had gotten a pieced together Frankenstein regulator.
Both cans were shiny chrome in very nice shape with almost no scratches and I was surprised the see that it had the removable exhaust horn. I had not seen that in the picture. So I know it is an older reg.
But here is what has me befuddled. The can where the label should be is perfectly flat, has no rectangular recess where a label would sit, and there are no slits in the cover where label tabs would be inserted. There are no holes where a label would be riveted either. It looks like it never had a label on it. The surface of the can is completely flat all the way across the face. What regulator was made with the removable exhaust horn that had no provisions to attach a label?
I am not an expert on all the lines of US Diver regulators but looking through the various websites on the internet showing pictures of various regulators I have not spotted a similar looking reg. Did they ever make a regulator that was sold without any label tag on it ?
The only thing that makes sense to me is that it once had a metal foil sticker that was applied but then came off. I know the round label RAM can is flat all the across the can where they had a metal foil sticker. I have even seen a round RAM label on an earlier can that had a rectangular recess on it. I reckon that came from USD habit of using up all the parts from earlier regs. But this one is a very early regulator based on the removable exhaust horn, yoke screw and mouthpiece and I don't believe a metal foil sticker would have been used on a regulator from that time period. And this is in no way a RAM.
Anyhow this one has me puzzled right now. It may be a common regulator and I just never saw one before. All of you guys probably have one exactly like it in your dive locker but I am unfamiliar with this one. Hopefully someone can educate me on it. I am also scratching my head about the gold plated parts unless it was overhauled by the navy and low mag parts were used. I know some non-mags never got stamped with the proof marks because they failed testing. Not sure what I have but the label issue is the thing that I am scratching my head about.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated,
I won't be able to open it up until I get it home to work on it as it has the C-clips on it. Sorry that I cannot post pics yet but I will try again later if I can get them resized.