Regulator: switching from Apeks to Poseidon, is it worth it?

I'm currently the proud owner of an Apeks XTX200 regulator set (FSR 1st stage, XTX200 2nd, XTX40 octopus). It's generally a good piece of kit, but I'm not very happy with it for two reasons:

At my regular breathing rate, both membranes make an annoying fart sound. I've never experienced this on my other, much cheaper regulators (Aqualung Calypso, Cressi AC2). Cleaning, servicing, changing the membranes doesn't help.
It's too overcompensated for my taste - above the 5m (~15ft) line I have to work for the air, below 18m (60ft) it actively tries to blow me up. I can adjust it depending on the depth but it's inconvenient. According to my LDS there's nothing that can be done about this.

With breathing being something that I rather enjoy doing, I'm willing to spend a bit more on high-end gear. So far I've only heard great things about Poseidon, and the Xstream Deep Mk3 looks fantastic on paper.
The thing is that the next Poseidon dealer is a three-hour drive away, so testing it before I spend the better part of 1 1/2 grand is not possible. Does anybody happen to have had a chance to compare the two, or other experience with Poseidon gear?

teotwaki, 6 months ago

The FSR is a very nice first stage. I’ve never had the pleasure, as I dive XTX50/DST. Our second stages are basically exact replicas, except for the chrome faceplate.

When you mention the fart sound, do you mean fluttering? There’s a Lake Hickory video about it. If that’s the sound, many 2nd stages will have that, as it’s just the diaphragm resonating with the body of the second stage at your specific breathing rate. I only notice it when I’m doing my buddy checks on the surface.

Regarding the overcompensation, I wouldn’t know, never experienced that. I would maybe reach out to some others techs and see if they know about this, or even Apeks directly, and see what they have to say. Your LDS, after all, is just one tech with training dating back a decade or so.

If you can get the work of breathing issue sorted, I don’t see why you’d change… unless you really have the 1500 quid burning a hole in your pocket, but there’s better things to spend it on than yet another set of regs.

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