A member of the Dacor cult now.

[tomcatpc]

Thanks to a fellow forum member, I now have my entry-level Dacor regulator.
Dacor Olympic 400.
Mark

71826616_2758496384202290_2576857451341021184_o by Mark Lodge, on Flickr

[tomcatpc]

When where these being made? 1969-1979-ish? And the Pacer series took their place?
Mark

[snark3]

Mark if you're going to be in the Dacor cult, I have a Dacor backpack and a Dacor K valve which can be had for short money. If you're interested PM me.

[tomcatpc]

Already have both items, and a couple spare Dacor J-Valves lurking about as well,
Thanks
Mark

[nikeajax]

Welcome brother: you're going to love this reg Yes, the Pacer replaced it.

JB

[SeaRat]

Okay, I've got a bit of trivia to tell you, which came up in my St. Bartholomew's Episcapol Church Choir last Thursday. Our Choir Dircetor, Tamara Still, said we should exhale like Darth Vader, of Star Wars fame. Well, I had to tell them that Darth Vader was, under the mask, breathing through a Dacor Dart single hose regulator for the sound effects. This was a generation of Dacor regulators before the Dacor Olympic series.

When George Lucas began work on Star Wars in the mid-1970s, he asked a USC classmate, Ben Burtt, Jr., to create all the sounds for the film about Luke Skywalker, a sheltered teen on the desert planet Tatooine who ends up saving the galaxy. Burtt, a legendary American sound designer, film editor and voice actor, had a number of inspirations for many of the sound effects heard in the Star Wars film franchise, including R2-D2's "voice," the lightsaber hum and the sound of the blaster guns. Burtt used a lion's roar for the sound of the Millenium Falcon's engine. Chewbacca’s grunts, whimpers and wails? ”Mostly bears, with a dash of walrus, dog, and lion thrown in," Burtt has explained when asked how he found the sounds to create the character of Chewbacca's voice. As he would later recall about visiting Long Beach's Marineland of the Pacific, which closed in 1987, "Its pool had been drained for cleaning—the walrus was stranded at the bottom, moaning—and that was the sound!"

Burtt was also the creator of Darth Vader's sinister-sounding heavy breathing. Burtt used an old Dacor scuba regulator to create the heavy breathing of Darth Vader. "The original concept I had of Darth Vader was a very noise-producing individual," Burtt has said. "He came out into a scene, he was breathing like some … windmill. You could hear his heart beating, he'd move his head you'd hear motors turning." But the sound designer quickly abandoned that approach—"He sounded like an operating room, an emergency room"—and instead placed a microphone inside a scuba regulator.

"When you breathe through it you could hear the valve opening and closing," Burtt told NPR in 2008. "It had a little bit of a click and clank to it. And the flow of air through the narrow rubber hoses had a really cold, very hissy quality to it. It was unreal."

We were unable to find the actual Dacor reg model used (in one YouTube video, the reg was misidentified as a respirator). Dacor was one of the five original United States diving gear makers: U.S. Divers, Healthways, Voit, Dacor and Swimaster. Dacor is now merged with Mares.
www.scubadiving.com/dacor-scuba-reg-behind-darth-vaders-breathing

John

[nikeajax]

Yeah, once Dacor figured out the Olympic series of regs, it was a meteoric climb from there in breathing quality...

JB

[tomcatpc]

I remember hearing Darth Vader's breathing was made by a Dacor reg, I did not know it was a Dart.
As much as I hear they are tough breathers, if I ever come across a Dacor Dart cheap*, I'm going to snag it. *I'm not looking for one and will not go out of my way to find one, but if I see one in a "junk pile" at a shop, or saw-meet, etc. I'm going to grab now. But first want to get this one in the water.
Mark

[nikeajax]

20bux plus shipping will get you a really nice Dart-II with a matching octo: the blue paint is really shiny and all intact on both second stages even...

JB

[tomcatpc]

I'll remember that for the future.
Mark

[SeaRat]

If you want to hear Darth Vader's breathing, here it is (but you may not want to listen to the end).

By the way, the breathing sounds for Darth Vader was the first generation of the Dacor Dart. The Dart II had a Venturi design which changed the sound a bit. The unique sound happens with the original diaphragm clicking back into position too.

John

potapecsky-magazin.cz/darth-vader-dycha-pres-regulator-dacor/

[SeaRat]

I have just torn down two of my three Dacor Dart second stages. Both are okay Breathing regulators. The Dart 2 is the better, but the Dart Is without a Venturi assist, and so you need to keep inhaling throughout the breathing cycle. The biggest problem with the breathing of these two regulators is their diaphragm, which was a neoprene one which got hard over time (it seems this happened with a lot of Dacor's neoprene products, specifically Fins too). But the Dart (original) without the Venturi assist could be classified as a hard breathing regulator.

The one thing needed to make these breath decently is to adjust the seat with the regulator pressurized. The double lever system is much like the R-4 levers, and can be adjusted by simply unscrewing the safety nut (nearest the mouthpiece) and unscrewing the seat until you get just a bit of a hiss (leak), then screw it back in slightly until that hiss goes away. The lever's are then at the exact height for best performance.

John

[nikeajax]

John, just for grins I used a silicone diaphragm form a ScubaPro that I modded, it was still doggy!

Mark, here it is:



JB

[SeaRat]

Jaybird,

Me and the Dacor Dart regulato go way back. Dive #90 in my original dive log, for June 25, 1973, shows a dive in Yaquina Bay, first spir, to 25 feet for 40 minutes during which I used 1000 psig from a single steel 72. The water temp was 54 degrees, on an outgoing tide. My remark below stated:

90--Used Dacor dart reg.--when noticably low on air (no seaview gauge) have 20 breaths.

So I was using the original Dacor Dart, and enjoyed the dive with it. I do agree, that regulator is rather "doggy." But the Dart 2 regulator, with a Venturi built in, breaths almost like an original USD Calypso. Dacor was experimenting with different things with this series, and came up with the Olympic series as a result of these experiments.

John

PS, one interesting aspect of the Dacor Dart regulator is that when it first came out, it had a different LP hose fitting than the standard fitting. I still have that regulator, but cannot use it as I got frustrated enough with the whole setup that I cut that original hose (but I still have all the fittings), so as to prevent my from continuing to experiment with it.

[nikeajax]

I think we can safely say that the Dart series is a unique regulator:







Like dig them crazy levers daddy-o! Oh, and the LP-hose is also unique to this regulator too

JB