The problem with buying the regulator seperatly from the likes of welduk is that you still need the needle valve, and its very difficult to get the correct one to fit the regulator you may buy, you would need to know the port size etc, usually what happens is that you end up buying a needle valve seperatly and have to run it "inline" on the CO2 hosing, anyway just a minor point it will work doing it this way regardless, but when you add shipping costs for buying both pieces seperatly etc you may as well just buy a ready made regulator and needle valve, the Aquamedic regulator whilst very nice looking, is also one of the most expensive you can buy, they usually retail for about £70 or £80 but you can easily buy a regulator and needle valve for about £50, it just isnt going to be Aquamedic.
The regulator i use is made by Tunze, i think it was £52 + postage, if you buy a standard regulator from welduk they are about £30 + postage, a needle valve will be about £10 + postage, so its much of a much really, i think D&D do a regulator for about £50 as well that will fit normal industrial type CO2 cylinders.
If you want to do it seperatly look for Clippard needle valves, i think there is only one distributor in the UK, i can tell you the type you need but not off the top of my head, i would need to look up the Clippard website, i think its the MK4 series that you want for our purposes, but they probably wont fit a normal regulator unless you know the exact adaptors you need hence you would probably end up running it inline, but it would still work.
Edit: A JBJ regulator will not work in the UK, they have entirely different thread fittings, JBJ is an American brand made for American CO2 cylinders, you might be confusing it with JBL, basically no American CO2 regulator will fit a european CO2 cylinder.
Or does anybody have one going for sale?(UK)
/cgi.ebay.ca/JBJ-CO2-Regulator-bubbl...1QQcmdZViewItem
