AMF Voit Swimaster Mares

[Dennis]

I need a Voit guru. The front of a Voit 50-Fathom says Voit Rubber Company. The 1962 Polaris says AMF Voit. The 1966 Trieste reads AMF Voit Swimaster. Was AMF a larger company that bought the Voit Rubber Company? Was Swimaster a division name created by Voit, or did it exist independently prior to being bought by Voit? When did Mares buy Voit?

Also, what years were the AMF Swimaster MR12 and the AMF Voit Swimaster Titan II introduced? Was the Tieste introduced at the same time as the Titan? What was different from the Titan I? The Titan II says "2 Stage Balanced". Was the MR12 balanced? I can guess that the MR12 was a diaphragm first stage. Was the Titan a diphragm first stage?

[Captain]

AMF is American Machine and Foundry. They are a big sporting goods manufactuer. I don't know when they bought Voit Rubber Co. But it was porbably sometime in the early 60's. I have a late 60's or early 70's Voit SwimMaster MR 12. I believe it has a balanced first stage. but I would have to take it apart to be sure. donot know when the name changed to Mares. You might try finding some history on AMF.

Tom

[Dennis]

It's amazing how little information about these old scuba companies is available on the internet. What I found is confusing, and is not a lot:

American Machine and Foundry was founded in 1900 and grew to become a worldwide industrial technology and leisure products company. American Machine and Foundry formally changed their name in 1971 to the AMF Company since they were out of the foundry business and concentrating their efforts on bowling equipment. In 1985 AMF Inc. was taken over in a hostile bid by Minnesota based company, Minstar Inc., who broke up the company and sold off most of the divisions on a worldwide basis. The name AMF lives on in tenpin bowling.

Involvement with tenpin bowling led AMF into a broad range of sporting equipment during the 1960's and 70's including importing Mares scuba gear (AMF/Mares). Mares was founded in 1949 by Italian free diving champion, Ludovica Mares and has grown to be the world's 4th largest scuba diving company. Mares is now a division of Head Tyrolia Mares (HTM), a state-owned Austrian sports goods group whose parent company is Austrian Tabak. HTM also acquired Dacor (established in 1954) as another division in 1998. The original MR-12 was a US made Voit design from the late 1960’s. Mares now sells the MR-12 and the current version still uses some of the same design components.

In 1958 AMF (American Machine and Foundry) acquired the W. J. Voit Rubber Company. Duck Feet fins were marketed by Pacific Molded Products as Swim Master Duck Feet. In the early 1960s, Swimaster was sold to Voit Rubber Company. Voit still seems to around and sells masks, fins, and snorkels. The company has a web site, see: www.voit.com/ .

[SeaRat]

By the way, as an aside, the “…recessed, snag proof clearing button…” was a direct dig at both Dacor, for their Dart regulators, U.S. Divers Company, for their original Calypso regulator, and Sportsways, for their Waterlung regulators, a// of which had a protruding clearing button.

John

[nikeajax]

So, um, John... Could we assume that some of the Voit stuff was also made by Sherwood too then? It struck me as odd that the Scubamaster used the same first stage as the MR-12, which was made in 1979

JB

[SeaRat]

Sept 8, 2021 15:48:19 GMT -8 nikeajax said:

So, um, John... Could we assume that some of the Voit stuff was also made by Sherwood too then? It struck me as odd that the Scubamaster used the same first stage as the MR-12, which was made in 1979

JB

Not sure, JB, as AMF Voit was an acronym for American Manufacturing and Fundry (AMF). So I'm kinda assuming that this was separate from Sherwood.

...For a time, the Italian scuba diving equipment manufacturer Mares was part of AMF, and was able to secure the rights to the MR-12 regulator, previously made by Voit, and to continue manufacture of the regulator. Mares would revert to being an independent manufacturer after AMF was sold. It eventually became part of a worldwide consortium of sports equipment companies, including another former AMF division, Head.[20]...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Machine_and_Foundry

That's about as far as I can go with this right now. We have a three-post thread on AMF Voit here in this repository.

John

[SeaRat]

I moved posts from the White Stag thread to this thread, as it is more about AMF Voit than White Stag.

John