Leo Greer

First off, I should mention that you actually have a rather high speed set up posted here. Rocket/SHS HTs tend to run at around 35K RPM unloaded. Assuming everything is built right, this setup should give you 30+ RPS on 11.1v. The issue with this is PME on your fairly weak spring. Next, I should mention that the majority of the parts posted aren’t really upgrades. Before buying anything you should check the gearbox yourself, as none of these parts are actually better than the stock parts (if they’re not broken or messed up for some reason). In fact, some of the parts could be downgrades depending on fitment (air nozzle and piston). Nozzles in particular can be very, very finicky, and chances are that your stock nozzle does its job great already. The Perun and clicker I can wholly recommend. It’s a luxury upgrade that’s worth it. The barrel is a maybe, in my opinion. AA barrels have a great rep in many circles, so I’d say it’s a good choice IF you wanted to replace your barrel… but there might not be any reason to replace in the first place. Before replacing the barrel, you should always examine the stock one for any defects or reasons to replace, and if not you should polish it up, stabilize it, and try it out! A hop rubber can be a good upgrade, but you should note that the Prometheus purple, while a fine choice, won’t perform better than your stock rubber, unless the stock rubber has something wrong with it, like being too slick and hard or having imperfections/tears in it. TL:DR, you need to assess the internals yourself before doing anything, as most “pro techs” are garbage at what they do. You don’t know what actually needs to be changed, modified, or replaced until you get inside a look.

Shorter barreled models often have stronger springs because of the shorter barrel. They need a stronger spring to maintain joule output. For example, if you fit a long barrel to a G&G ARP9 (American version) you can bump your joules to 1.7J+ from 1.15Jish, since they have a strong spring to avoid PME and boost power. Most likely, the FPS differences between model are caused by Krytac just using the springs available to them and not caring about the difference. For example, my stock Krytac Trident SPR (American) shot about 1.6J OOTB and didn’t lose any of that power, which is above most field limits for “assault rifle” power.

Of course. Gas supply is just severely more limited with AEGs. It's not even close. Even on .20g BBs, you start running out of volume at 509mm with an efficient AEG. You could make the barrel of most GBBRS four feet long and still have tons of extra volume.

I'll second the above posts, as well as add this: In general, a very short barrel can be made to shoot just about as well as a long barrel. Airsoft does not benefit in any way shape or form from a long barrel, as the only thing the BB needs is enough time to fully stabilize in the barrel. In RS shooting barrel length is much more important because RS bullets travel faster and have much less time to stabilize. How fast BBs stabilize in your RIF is individual to your setup, your BBs used, and several other factors. As a general rule... 300mm seems to be the sweet spot where accuracy and length meet. You gain nothing by going above, but may gain accuracy by lengthening to 300mm. However, for example, my primary uses a 260mm and gets amazing accuracy. This is just a ballpark and not a hard rule. Range in general is governed by the joule output, BB stability, and BB backspin/weight. These are all, for the most part, independent of barrel length.

Good call on playing first and “upgrading” later! Many of what we call “upgrades” are situational, specific, and many companies and parts aren’t actually any better than stock, and can in fact be worse. It’s good to take your time, so your research, and learn from those that have made mistakes before you! Adolf is correct—you will get numerous different answers from everyone, and it’s your choice as to what you want to go with. Chances are everyone’s suggestions will work fine. Here’s the skinny: in simple, the hop rubber is the rubber piece that goes over your barrel and, when depressed by the hop arm/nub, provides backspin to the BB. Some designs use a forked contact patch, the original (or legacy) design uses a mound shaped patch, and others use flat patches or concave patches and various other shapes. The best shape depends on your setup and application, but suffice it to say that you can make any of them work great. For a beginner, I would recommend changing to the PDI W-hold, Krytac orange or blue, G&G blue, or another reputable forked nub rubber, as they tend to offer better performance than legacy style rubbers (in my experience) like the Prometheus purple and other mound style rubbers (the rubber in your gun is probably mound styled). The forked nub rubbers (or split nub) are also easy to tune. You don’t need to change your nub, and you shouldn’t suffer from overhop issues. I should note, in general before changing anything, you should clean everything around and inside the barrel group and hop unit thoroughly with rubbing alcohol, and you can also do DIY stabilization mods that may increase accuracy by a lot. These are mods like shimming your hop arm, shimming your inner barrel inside your outer barrel, and shimming your hop unit in your receiver. I wrote a full guide to accuracy in general HERE Not everyone will agree with my specific opinions, but in my guide I aim to provide a general understanding of how the system works, the principles behind upgrading, and parts and consumables you may use to get there.

Anyone have one yet? My squirrel brain is telling me yes, and my wallet is telling me no, so I thought I'd see if any of y'all have firsthand experience and good reasons to go for it or avoid it!

I did the same thing with 5000 BLS .32g. My man, you’re in good company!

I should’ve elaborated more—a good spring should experience little to no power drop over a minimum of 100,000 cycles, and hopefully much longer, but, of course, all springs will experience some power loss.

Seconds on the PDI W-hold for hop units that don’t like ML rubbers. I can confirm that they don’t like anything heavier than .30g even at 1.5+J. Mine perform the best using .25g. I like the PDI W-Hold or Modify Ryusoku for “legacy” spec hop units, those being tighter than newer design and less likely to accept ML rubbers. If an ML rubber can be used, then that is my recommendation. I will also be happy using Krytac Orange and Blue, G&G Blue, and I’ll flathop just about anything. In general, using the correct nub and with correct stabilization, you can make almost any rubber perform excellently. The key is in using the proper nub shape, and how you set up the rest of your barrel group around the rubber.

Too loose is indeed better, but in my experience you can have too tight of shimming and still have a good sound. Most of the cycling noise is related to the bevel-pinion junction, and how well the teeth match up. I believe your results will probably hold true for longer ranges as well, given that the barrel and rubber don’t affect the BB once it leaves their influence. So, the variance you see now should carry over, extrapolating into similar variance at any range. Have you perchance done stabilization mods on either RIF?

Open warfare is inevitable. Embrace it.

Seconds to what Fatboy posted. A good spring should basically never compress, whereas bad springs can lose power very quickly, or even bend.

A better question is why you want such a long barrel?

This issue is caused (almost certainly) by that small little microswitch in the top right corner. Looks up how microswitches react to relatively high amperage (compared to what they’re supposed to be used for) and you’ll have your answer. It’s a design flaw with the EFCS, causing the microswitch to send thousands of electrical pulses through the system, causing heat to build up, causing the chip to fry.

Let me see if I can dig up some more info. As far as I’m aware there is no such effect. I know people who do the mod in builds running 70 RPS+, but of course it depends on what you use, where you put it, how much, etc. Let me see if I can ask some the high RPS techs how it wears in.

It is indeed real, my good sir. I believe people have also used different kinds of rubberized sealants in thin layers, but I’d go shrink wrap for simplicity (you seal it with a heat gun or hair dryer).

Certain springs are quieter, in my experience, but Guarder are not especially so. They’re also not especially loud either. If you really want to make your spring quieter, you can just put some shrink wrap around a few of the coils.

@Lozart Good point on parts availability. I try not to recommend anything I know is super hard to find, but I’m sure it happens… @MrTea Glad you’ve been able to find most of the items you need! I’m watching the thread waiting to hear what you’re able to get out of it.

Which one did you buy? Umarex doesn’t actually make those—they’re just a rebrander with an HK license—and there are different models from the extreme cheap crap to being made by VFC.

I’m actually convinced they made the gears semi-proprietary on purpose, since there’s really no reason at all to place the gears like they did and make the spur unusual… it’s painful. One note on adding a Perun Hybrid—it actually takes a fair amount of material removal to fit a Perun to their GB shells, so be ready with your dremel, but go for it!

Specna has changed manufacturers around over the years, and unfortunately I’ve never had my hands on any of them. From personal experience contrasted with what I’ve heard, Novi/Krytac perform better more consistently. Are they bad gnus? That seems to depend on the model/OEM, and that I don’t know anything about. It is worth noting that Specna/Novi are quite a bit cheaper than Krytac, which ups my recommendation significantly for either. The squeak is related to the height of the bevel gear in relation to the pinion. The spur gear is pushed upwards by the upraised edges of the bearing hole, which increases bevel height, and causes the sound. This is evident even on extremely high end Krytac builds using extremely nice motors. (I’ve personally tried Tienly, ASG, ZCI, Lonex, etc, and other assorted pinions transplanted onto various motors. I was able to fix the issue by filing the lips of the bearing hole to lower the spur gear by a large amount. The issue then was that the shaft of the spur gear was too long and pressed on the gear for the dual selector, so then more dremel work. It’s not easy to replace the stock set because of classic fitment issues. The Prommy set does work, but from what I’ve heard they’re not good quality (I don’t have personal experience), The original Krytac set are extremely durable (much better than SHS). If you want to increase the speed, I would highly recommend picking up a quality 40K-35K motor, such as Tienly, the ASG Boost 30K (actually 35K), or simply ordering one from ChiHai. As far as I know, the motors are the same size as ordinary long shaft motors, but if not you can simply adjust the motor height, so the minute differences in shaft length should be irrelevant. I’m actually away from home for a while, so I can’t measure mine for you, but if you’d like I can ask around and find more info on the Prommy sets and Krytac shaft length.

It all depends on what you value. At baseline, you should know that airsoft will never be anywhere near as accurate as RS shooting. The very top end of upgraded tuned spring snipers struggle to make accurate shots at 100-110 meters. For an OOTB rifle, you shouldn’t expect more than 80 meters even with the best ammo. You should also know that spring snipers are not more accurate than any other class of airsoft weapon. They all shoot 6mm plastic balls (except for some very rare, odd, irrelevant models that shoot 8mm), and so the physics are the same between every airsoft gun. Secondly, I would suggest you go over to airsoftsniperforum.com, make an account there, and ask the same question. They specialize in everything to do with long range, and someone on there has dealt with every model you’re considering. Back to what you value—pure accuracy out of the box isn’t the only factor you should consider. I’m not an expert on spring snipers, but you should be on the lookout for parts compatibility with common models (IE, TM VSR), because if anything does break or wear out you want to be able to fix it, magazine compatibility (some models feature horrible mags). And finally, since I’m running out of spring sniper information, remember that price tag does not mean quality in any way shape or form! The best all round “buy-and-don’t-touch” spring sniper (compatibility, quality, accuracy) is currently considered to be the Novritsch VSR, despite there being plenty of far more expensive options. Good luck on the journey!

Second on Novi—the warranty is nice, and they perform okay OOTB, especially for their price. My one note is that Novi uses (on the SSR4) the same crappy hop unit, hop rubber, and barrel that Lancer Craptical does. All the money is in the gearbox, getting you an ETU, good neo motor, high speed gears, etc. Krytac is becoming slightly outdated at this point in regard to their offerings for the price. The internals, while being quite solid, are intentionally proprietary in some painful areas, like the spur gear. This leads to the infamous “Krytac squeak”, which is extremely hard to fix. Particular to the UK models with lower FPS, they get overspin on 11.1v very easily. This leads to you either needing to use a 7.4v, or do work right out of the box. None of these are “make or break” cons, but when you’re paying as much as you do for a Krytac… you should expect better. On the flip side, Krytac does a lot of things great. Their barrel groups are the most accurate OOTB of any RIF I’ve had my grubby fingers on. Their gearbox shells are bulletproof, and the gears, while proprietary, are stronger than almost all aftermarket sets available.

I would recommend the newer Arcturus lines. They’re coming out with newer models that feature a collaboration with GATE, but right now the C.A.T. Series and ME series feature extremely solid gearboxes paired with great barrel groups. The externals are good quality, no creaking or cracking, but the star of the show are the reliable, simplistic, and extremely well performing internals. I’m a tech, and very familiar with these, so here’s my more detailed opinions and notes: (I’m long-winded, so there’ll be a TL:DR at the end. Feel free to skip.) The gearbox is the same on all the models from 170 to 400, but the externals go up in quality. The externals are easy to judge for yourself, so here’s my take on the internals. The compression set is 100% good. Steel cylinder, CNC POM nozzle, and cylinder head with great seal. The piston is bulletproof. It’s much tougher than almost all aftermarket pistons. I and another tech both use the stock pistons in DSGs doing 55+ RPS. The gearset is ordinary, but solid. I use the stock gears in upgraded builds doing higher FPS and faster RPS. The trigger unit is a microswitch paired with an inline 3034 MOSFET. This means you have 1,000,000 cycles with no issues, according to manufacturer specs, as well as a tactile “click” to the trigger. The design of the gearbox here does make it very difficult to install any aftermarket trigger units if you ever wanted to, so keep that in mind. Arcturus has a steel QC spring guide that can be accessed just by removing the stock. The motor is a mid-level neo motor that does about 30K, which means you’re hitting 20 RPS on 11.1v (M120 version, faster for the weaker versions) with great response. Don’t expect it to pull any M170s, but it’ll get the job done, and I’ve used them in tougher builds as well doing 25+. The spring is Japanese tempered steel, and is of excellent quality. I tested four of these springs from an Arcturus rep, and got the exact same FPS from each, as well as ~1-2 FPS variance. No change over time, between a heavily used spring and ones right out of the packaging. The gearbox is solid. Nothing special, except for the split GB shell on the CAT models, but it’s strong and easy to work on if anything should happen. Arcturus uses 8mm bushings for spur and sector, and 8mm bearings on the bevel. The barrel group is very, very good out of the box. The hop unit is an ordinary plastic rotary, which works well. The hop rubber is a split design similar to those that Krytac uses. It does the job out to about 60 meters, but you may need an upgrade for farther distances. The barrel is where it stands out, as Arcturus features a 6.02mm steel QPC coated barrel, which is excellent. It’s much better than ZCI and a lot of “upgraded” barrels. They also come wired to deans with a high quality plug. Cons: The only real con is that you’re prohibited from using any aftermarket electronic trigger units, and doesn’t feature an ETU built in. It’s a matter of preference whether you like your RIFs with computers built in, but Arcturus not allowing you an option (yet) is a con for sure. TL:DR, the internals are great, super simple, and will allow you to keep up with players running far more expensive RIFs.

Ditto to the previous three posts. In the early days of my teching career, I attempted to upgrade a RIF and made some huge mistakes. It took me almost six months of fiddling and research until I was able to fix that RIF properly. And many “techs” are just as bad as I was. They throw parts in with no logic and no proper technique, and it doesn’t work well. Before you upgrade anything, you should have a clear, concise idea of what you want to see improve and why. You should already be using high quality BBs and a good quality battery. You should also be a confident player. You don’t have to be great at the game yet (it takes a while 😁), but you should be confident in how you play, or the upgrades won’t matter a bit.