Newbie - Lincolnshire / Yorkshire

[LTolstoy]

What brand should i be looking at for a first choice RIF and say i have a budget of £300 should i allocate £50-100 of this budget on upgrades or just go all in £300 for an out of the box RIF?

Played 3 Games so far and without a doubt my favourite hobby!

Also could anybody suggest an average price of a decent sniper rifle as me and 2 other friends are considering splitting the cost to see if anybody sticks with it as i know its a whole different game with snipers

 

[Finius]

Sorry to hear you're in Lincolnshire, you've not got much choice available to you in terms of local airsoft stores or sites

Whatever you do, avoid Lindsey Airsoft, I'm pretty sure they don't have any insurance. LAC are good though. Arena Airsoft based in Grimsby have a small shop that sells various RIF and does upgrades/accessories etc.

In terms of rifles, with a budget of £300, I'd go for something by TM, they're reliable and generally form the base of most "workhorse" rifles - exactly what you want first time really - no good having sick range and accuracy if it'll die every three weeks or whatnot.

Allocate some of your budget to accessories if you can, mostly magazines, batteries and the proper safety equipment for you (for most, that's glasses, but take the time to invest in whatever protection you want/feel is best, don't be afraid to spend quite a bit either, no-one's gonna think you a fool for spending whatever you need to in order to make your eyes/face/teeth feel safe). Once you've got everything you need to play comfortably, then I'd be thinking about looking into upgrades.

Sniper rifles, go for something based on the TM VSR, they're universally the best system if you take the time to upgrade them and they come out the box pretty good too. Failing that, anything by ARES would be a strong contender nowadays.

Hope that helps! Some people may disagree with me on the TM shout nowadays, it's an old fashioned view but I still think they're the best in the business by far.

 

[sl1k]

Ok, I'm getting my locals slowly into airsoft and get this question often. I'll try be as informative as possible.

First of all, when you look at guns, you'd have like a favourite platform i.e m4/m16, ak, g36 etc etc

TM is a fantastic company don't get me wrong, probably the best out of the box so it is considered to be newbie friendly. However, it will eat most of your budget on the rifle itself and on the long run as you learn more about how aegs work, you'll learn that TM are neither good for high velocity nor high speed setups. They will run forever, but only if they remain untouched, meaning when you do eventually want to work on it, you will end up splashing hundreds replacing the whole gearbox.

So, what I tend to recommend are, JG for their M4 and G36c, or cybergun/CYMA/dboys for their aks.

Now the reason I say JG for the M4 and G36c, is that they come "field ready" in terms of velocity, made very very durable, and can run for tens even hundreds of thousands of rounds without needing any replacement parts (telling you from experience.) Not to mention they are in the £150 area, leaving you plenty for mags, batteries, smart chargers, bbs and your attire. However there is one thing you need to do, and that is when you purchase it, tell the retailer you want it serviced there and then. Specifically you want it re-shimmed, -regreased and the 2nd and 3rd tooth shaved for angle of engagement. If they are even a half decent retailer, they should know exactly what you areasking for. If not, I suggest look else where (I will recommend a couple retailers at the end who can do this for you.) Reason you do this, is because chinese quality control is hit and miss in terms of how the factory puts the gun together, you taking this step pretty much garentuees the longetivity of your aeg.

Same goes for CYMA/D-boys, or any airsoft gun you purchase in the future as NO company shims their gearboxes to a decent standard (any tech would know.) CYMA and d-boys aks come with metal bodies and real wood furniture, internals are like tanks honestly. Also, price is around the same region as the JGs.

In terms of user friendliness, durability and performance you can never go wrong with the above. Good upgrades for any AEG out of the box would be the hop bucking as it will increase your range and accuracy straight away.

As for the sniper, not many snipers come with even half the performance required to be an effective DMR. Believe me, you will spend a rediculous amount trying to get it up to par, and it's just not possible unless you are good with internals and know what your doing.

A retailers I can suggest that can carry the service out would be airsoftworld.net.

I will soon be opening a tech/mod service and maybe even airsoft retail, and I will be looking out for the newer generation of airsoft players. Will let people know when things get rolling!

 

[LTolstoy]

Thanks for lengthy response to both, I am looking into buying a G&G Combat machine or an ICS m4 or would you still go for the JG over these 2? And whatever id like to get a tight bore barrel & swap hop bucking

 

[sl1k]

Combat machines are sportsline guns, basically made "economically" which means cheap, also I know many people on other forums that get loads of problems. ICS has ALOT of propietery parts, meaning your restricted to buying only ICS parts, no other after markets will work. And they tend to be mediocre to when you consider what you pay.

 

[Airsoft-Ed]

I have to disagree, G&G are exceedingly good in my experience and this entire forum seems to do nothing but highly praise them, so they've got to be doing something right.

As for ICS, the performance is worth the money, there's little point modding a gearbox unless you're after something super specific anyway, ICS will go stock for hundreds of thousands of rounds, my old site's hire guns are testament to this (average 3000 shots through them every weekend all year for over 5 years with only very minor maintenance - still shooting perfectly. Sure some of them had lost semi auto and the guns were battered to hell, but they still fired really nice), so that doesn't matter and ICS produce enough external parts to allow the owner a perfectly acceptable degree of creative control with regard to the aesthetics of the gun, just expect the prices to be a little higher because not much of it has standard fittings.

As it happens, ICS and G&G would be my two most highly rated manufacturers. Both very accurate with good range right out of the box, suitably durable for all types of play (though be careful running into trees and such with the plastic body on the ICS) both do a plastic and a metal range of all their guns, so you can go with the plastic if you're on a budget, since the internals are the same as the metal line.

Nothing bad to say about either of them.

Experience for ICS comes from my L85 which is my main rifle, had it about a year, worked on it a lot but still mostly stock in the gearbox area. Also used the hire guns mentioned above a lot and love them.

Experience with G&G comes from having an MP5 and M14 by them and would like to add that they're the only guns I've ever owned that I've never felt needed anything adding to make them better, no need to swap the barrel, the hop or anything else at all.

CYMA and JG on the other hand, my mate has a JG G3, had it 6 months, issues galore. Bad, bad accuracy from the box, he bought a tightbore and there wasn't even much of an improvement. The plastics used in the external construction are very poor and worse of all the pistol grip screws into the receiver, plastic to plastic, tighten it too much and you fubar the threads and lose your pistol grip - Big problem.

CYMA AK - same mate, had an AKs74u - Phenomenal. One of the best guns I've ever known, so small but it was like a laser gun with sniper range and support gun rate of fire. However, after 18 months it's developed an undefinable jamming problem, rendering it unskirmishable.

My vote would go with either ICS or G&G, but since you've picked out the Combat Machine range, just stick with that.

My 2 pence.

 

[sl1k]

I have to disagree' date=' G&G are exceedingly good in my experience and this entire forum seems to do nothing but highly praise them, so they've got to be doing something right.[/quote']
I didn't say they make bad guns, I said combat machines are made to be budget guns which is quoted from their marketing. Their barrel assembly are multi piece so it is eventually going to become loose. Not to mention it's pot metal on the barrel assembly, wrong turn into a tree and more than loikely it'll crack, rest of the body being abs plastic. The piston head is not ported, so air seal will be lacking. Inner barrel is a lighter cheaper metal, meaning more likely to vibrate when shot which will affect accuracy. Stock combat machines are extremely lacking in range and accuracy stock. My stock cyma aks74u shot 150+ feet out to a chest sized target, stock. Combat machines also use bearings, not recommended as they all eventually fail. Trigger components are also zinc, so yeah they'll be fine but if you drop your aeg at an angle it'll break. Theres a couple more things but i'll leave it here. Combat machines are exactly what you pay for, very decent cheap guns. Whereas JG and CYMA, are cheap guns that are extremely good value for money and exceed every expectation, AS LONG AS YOU TUNE IT RIGHT AWAY. Just look up the components and you'll see what I mean.

Your experience is based on the l85, which I concede is the best l85 in the airsoft business. However, if you get every ICS model and put them beside their competetion, other than the l85, they tend to be inferior. Don't believe me? Just look into it. They are also a nightmare from a techs point of view, whereas G&G are atleast TM compatible.

CYMA and JG on the other hand' date=' my mate has a JG G3, had it 6 months, issues galore. Bad, bad accuracy from the box, he bought a tightbore and there wasn't even much of an improvement. The plastics used in the external construction are very poor and worse of all the pistol grip screws into the receiver, plastic to plastic, tighten it too much and you fubar the threads and lose your pistol grip - Big problem.[/quote']

I did mention chinese quality control ;-) that's all it is. There are lemons out there unfortunately. Also keep in mind, ASG contracted out certain JG guns to be manufactured elsehwere after thecrackdown in china. Hence there were a few bad batches that were made by an unknown company. ASG then went back to them, said WDF and got it sorted.