Vintage Double Hose

To the amazement of my wife, every time I drive the family between Virginia Beach and Chicago, I manage to stop to meet with someone from the VDH community or I pick up an old tank or regulator along the way. Last week I visited Karl and his wonderful collection in Indianapolis.

While I was there, I mentioned to him that I had an old Trademark Green Label which had a threaded fitting in place of yoke and wondered if it was an early hookah reg. He asked me to post a few pictures, so if anyone has the story on these, I’d be interested to know.

The reg is in great shape and appeared to be in unused condition. The one-piece hose is flexible and shows no signs of cracking. The label bears no serial number. I got it from a guy in San Bernardino who said he just found it hanging on a wall in an antique shop.

I've looked at the ear;y catalog references, but none of the illustrations I've found show the hose connection for the hookahs.

I usually subscribe to Ron’s philosophy of diving all my regs, but I don’t have the heart to rebuild this one to dive in salt water after it survived all these years unscathed.

Happy new year 2018 - I wish you a good year of diving.

Doug

I would guess early hookah. Regulator looks new.
Karl

Karl,

Thanks - have you seen hookahs un-serialized before?

Doug

That inlet looks like a standard Hookah/Oxygen fitting. Could be an early or experimental attempt by AL to add an external low pressure input by just entirely eliminating the first stage to make an economical Hookah regulator out of existing bodies.

Of course some machinist could have made this for himself. Herman, were you playing with lathes as a little boy back in the 50's?

Nope....I'm not THAT old.

Thanks for the input - if someone has one, could they please post a picture of later hookah connection, but before the move to the hookah fitting on the standard DA AMs? in the '59 catalog, the DA AM clearly had a hookah port pictured and the Hookah was advertised as a DA.

Doug

Nothing unusual about that fitting. That was the way US Divers set up their regulators for use as a hookah prior to reconfiguring their bodies with the Aquamaster with the hookah port. Seen it many times. If you look in their older catalogs, they sold their regulators set up for hookah, but they don't show a picture of the back of the regulator with this fitting. I'm more intrigued by the lack of a serial # stamp. I haven't seen that one before. Nice clean regulator. There is something unusual though about your reg. It has a forged body instead of cast. The forged bodies came in midway through the blue label series.

Never have seen a green label without a number. Got to love the hose. I have seen these on a handful full of blue labels but not very often. I have two in blue rubber and both are in really good shape. Based on my own experience what ever rubber they used held up better than any other USD hose.