Well, I couldn't pass up on commenting on this topic - hopefully Jerry doesn't yell at me for trolling again, since the original poster explicitly asked for opinions on the Regulator.
First, a warning: my opinions on the Regulator bowie (and unwillingness to roll over and shut up about them) ended up getting me permanently banned from the Scrap Yard forums. So I might be just a touch bitter.
If you get one, get the deregulator. The original regulator version has an all-rubber guard, which protrudes way too far from the handle, and the top guard is way too easy to damage during work like batoning. Several users have seen the exact same mode of guard failure, which goes something like this: batoning knife, smack the tip, but the knife binds up and rotates (since it's a THIRD OF AN INCH thick), despite you pushing down on the handle. As the knife rotates upward, the guard, which sticks out way too far, spins into the log, and is very easily damaged, since it's simply unsupported rubber. Thus, you have to really baby this knife if you want the guard to stay pretty, and babying the knife is not at all what I expect from a Scrap Yard product.
Now, despite the fact that they actually produced a "fix" to this issue in the form of the deregulator, Jerry and Dan still insist that there is no issue whatsoever. In fact, they have, on multiple occasions, blamed the users of the products for the damage they have seen - Jerry even went so far as to call my home phone number (which he only had because I purchased knives from him - a highly inappropriate use of my personal information, IMO), to lecture me about how I was wrong and the design wasn't flawed, and yell at me for trolling when I posted negative things about a few of his products when I was ticked off at the way they handled the situation. If the design wasn't flawed, then why release the deregulator version, with the lame top guard chopped off? It really grinds my gears to see a company that praises a guy for hammering a knife into a cement block, kicking it, and breaking the tip off, to then do a 180 and blame the users for using their knives "incorrectly", when the poorly designed, unsupported rubber guard is damaged.
As far as the rest of the design of the Regulator, I actually think it's a pretty decent knife. HOWEVER, the test team version was a superior design, in my opinion. (This is ONLY from experience with different knife grinds and my understanding of knife geometry - I have not used the release version , as I sold my test team regulator, and I refused to buy the release version due to the reasons I talked about above.
The main difference in the two is that the test team regulator was a full flat grind - that made it a better knife for batoning, and it actually sliced surprisingly well for a 1/3 inch thick blade. The switch to the saber grind on the release version was a big mistake, IMHO, as it might have slightly improved chopping ability, and in doing so it probably sacrificed cutting and batoning performance. The Regulator was never a chopper - it was a sharpened prybar that could cut and chop and baton, and now it's a sharpened prybar that can only chop. The switch in grinds has sacrificed versatility, again IMHO.
On the other hand, the choil on the new regulator is WORLDS better than the choil on the test team version. The TT choil was awful, and one of the things I recommended fixing. While they ignored pretty much every other piece of feedback I provided in the detailed test I submitted, I am glad they at least changed that one thing.
My advice? Find a full flat ground test team version on the exchange, cut off the poorly designed top guard, and you'll have a pretty versatile knife that performs and balances exceedingly well for a third of an inch thick sharpened prybar. Or, buy the release version, and send it off to a knife maker to have a full flat grind put on it.
