[Xcess]

I played my first paintball game when I was 17. That was an unfortunately long time ago when pgp pistols were state of the art. I loved the game and played for the next 10 years or so constantly upgrading my equipment. Somewhere I lost the love for the game and moved on to other hobbies. What used to be an adrenaline filled, strategic, game turned into “pour and pray” at least at my local fields and that wasn’t my type of game.
So I guess you could say I’m so old school that I’m new. My last pump was a Bud-orr sniper II and my last semi was a Tippman 68.

So my brother-in-law is into paintball and I’m listening to his stories and I’m seriously considering getting back in since it doesn’t seem like the speed ball freaks who couldn’t hit the broadside of the barn at ten paces without a hundred balls have taken over the game quite yet. Not that I’m bitter or anything

Anyway I start looking at guns, ooops I mean markers, and gear. I’m trying to figure out what makes a “timmie” (it took me a while to figure out what a “timmie” was by the way) better then say a shocker…or for that matter why either of them is better then an Imp. Rate of fire doesn’t really seem all that different and accuracy isn’t really dependent on the action types…so what’s the deal? Tell me it isn’t just “looks”.

Speaking of looks, since when did “pimpin” become something other then an insult? I’m going to speculate that someone who didn’t know any pimps coined the “compliment”. Besides some of the guns out there would make pimps blush. Did all of the “fantasy” knife makers start making paint guns? Or maybe the same kids who trick out ford escorts got into paint gun manufacturing? All you need for some of these guns is some neon tubes and some fuzzy dice to hang off the front.

I would really like my “marker” (that is so pc) to look less like a neon alien space gun but, to be honest, I’ll shoot one of the odd looking things if those are the “best”. Trying to find the best isn't very easy as I can’t find very many objective measurements. Accuracy, as I measure it, from a paintball gun is almost a contradiction in terms. Some are better then others though, so what is the most accurate or is it still mostly barrel/paint choice? Rate of fire is important and I understand why they have gone electronic. I think I even get what ramping is and why it’s illegal in tourneys. Still…it seems as if the biggest r.o.f problem is the feeder and not the gun. What is really the best feeder? What is the fastest stock gun mechanically?

What are the advantages and drawbacks of the different air systems these days?

I’m sure I’ll have plenty of questions trying to catch up with the technology so try to be patient with this “old guy”.

[IsntAnything]

Wow, it's refreshing to read a post by someone who apparently understands the English language. I think it would be safe to say I'm a little "old school" myself except that I just started playing paint ball about a month or two ago.

Warning: Some 10 year old is at this very moment typing a huge response to your email, flaming the heck out of you for not searching all over the internet for answers to all your questions... ignore him.

Ok, like I said I'm "new" so I can answer some of your questions and some I won't attempt:

Yes, I think the "fantasy knife makers" are indeed now designing paintball guns. Apparently they are intended to look like something out of a Dali painting.

I think I've seen a pic posted by some kid who had the fuzzy dice! His name was pwnzerl337 or some cryptic nonsense like that.

"Pimpin" I'm not sure about that one but it sure is commonplace. Heck, I even say pimpin'.

"Marker" Don't say marker, I played with markers in kindergarden. What I play with now is called a GUN. "This is my rifle, this is my gun! This is for fighting, This is for fun!"

The "best" gun for you is fairly subjective. From your post I would assume you are going to play tournament ball. If that's the case then you lost me cause I only play "woodsball" or as I like to call it "thinking mans paintball".

Accuracy from what I can tell is still largely attributable to paint/barrell match. There are some good charts online that show you what paints work with what barrels. Here's one: Paint to Barrel Match Chart

R.O.F: yep, I think electric is the way to go (with a good feeder) but again, I'm a lowly woodsball player who uses skill rather than a dazzling display of paintball mayhem to "tag"... "mark"... no SHOOT my enemies.

Well, that's all I'm going to attempt to comment on. My limited knowledge has been stretched as it is. Good luck!

[Brockocoli]

wow i don't have much to say to follow up these great posts except that oh darn my computer is sticky...woodsball was the original paintball game and still is the best in my opinion.

About the air systems....c02 is mainly for the newer players who can not afford compressed air. While i run c02 on my gun, it is not as accurate/clean as compressed ari. Compressed air helps keep your shots more accurate and is not as cold as c02...

As for the loaders it is your preference...electronic is mainly what people use now days because gravity fed loaders can not feed fast enough for 90% of markers out there. The Halo B is the most popular but the Qloader can feed around 35 ball per second or so it says.

Much of the "urban and street" culture has been brought to paintball. Milling machines can now craft more and more complex and beautiful guns...the rof has increased/different and better parts on the gun. Lots of people are still OLD SCHOOL...just ask some people on the forum...

[lbreevesii]

its so good to see another player wo is unaffected by all the hype and the political correctness of the sport today. anybody who calls a paintball gun a "marker" should have their gun stripped from them and sent out into a round w/ a sharpie to get people out. as i've said in the past. any mechanical device that is responsible for the inducing of force on any decently sized projectile is a gun. hehe i'm done with my rant... anway...

what gun to get really depends on what type of pb your'e playin. i assume you'll be playin speedball. and franctly, if i were you i would get myself a good accurate pump or a good accurate semi first off so you can go down to the feild and first be laughed at by all the n00bs who think you're stupid for not being able to shott 13 or more bps. then you go out on the feild and use your pump/stock class type skills and accuracy to school all of them. they deserve the lesson. then later on you can upgrade to something like a good used bko or somethin then you'll really be kickin but bc you won't be using it to just spray paint, insteid you'll be using it to place highly accurate short bursts on your targets and be getting the job done right.

personally i really wish that i had started out in the old days w/ a pump or somethin like that bc it builds skil, and that skill will be transfered over to all forms of the sport.

as for pimp...i have no idea when that came into lexicon, but the way it started was the compliment end of a pimp(in the true sense) having cars and suits and what not that look nice. so generaly if something is "pimp" it looks good or is cool... in short its tight.
-Larry

[Shadymxcn]

First off, any high end gun is going to have some pretty intense milling so if you want a high end top of the line gun you will just have to deal with that. A good stock gun that doesnt look to crazy, i think, would be just a impulse or a matrix. If you dont like how it shoots out of the box there are plenty of upgrades for them to bring up BPS and things like that. But the most accurate of all the guns is a autococker, but they are normally heavier then most guns and dont shoot as fast as the guns like the DM4. Also, depending on which autococker you are talking about, they are fairly complicated and can be a hard to take care of. But you can upgrade Cockers like crazy so they can be amazing if you are willing to drop the cash.

I dont know a whole lot about air systems but i can tell you a little. CO2 is less consistent then nitrogen, which can cause your FPS you spike and jump around. Also Nitrogen is much cleaner and better overall for your gun.

There are a lot of different views on barrels and how they effect your accuracy. Some people say that the longer the barrel the more accurate, others say anything longer then 12in is just a waste. For the most part the best barrels are the FREAK, Evil Pipe, or the empire barrel kit. No matter the barrel you get i suggest you get a Kit.

I suggest if you have any questions you visit all the other sections of the forum and check out the sticky posts at the top, or just use the search.

-P.S. Neon lights in the guns would be the coolest thing i had ever seen. Also, there is nothing wrong with space age looking guns. If you are going to spend the money you might as well get something that looks as sexy as it shoots.

[Xcess]

Thanks for the responses. From my research, in addition to these responses, so far this is what I have come up with.

HPA = Good
Qloader = Good
Neon/pastel jerseys = Bad (maybe that's more taste then research )

paintguns still shoot like any low velocity smoothbore with a round ball in other words about as accurate as throwing bricks.

Still lots of hype and the market is still being driven by young suburban wannabies with mommy+daddies credit card. That's good for the sport I guess...lots of easy money in that market. If they could just tie in sex...they should mill boobs into these space guns and clean up. I should call Bob Long! He could call it the por*o-pimp intimidator!

It looks like the top guns are intimidators or angels from what I can see. I'll shudder to shoot one of these liberachi guns but if I keep them hidden until I'm on a paintball field I guess I'll survive.

Autocockers seem nice if a little on the slow side. Smartparts Shocker and Imps seem like a good option too. There are a lot of other guns that I'm weeding through but right now they are all fading into a neon insectlike blur.

[theunforgiven]

bright shirts arent bad. ur gunna be seen either way...400th post!

[Xcess]

I wasn't talking about stealth...I was talking about ugly.

[Shadymxcn]

If they could just tie in sex...they should mill boobs into these space guns and clean up. I should call Bob Long! He could call it the por*o-pimp intimidator!

Call is a bob shlong intimidator

Also just to let you know. I have a lot of horror stories about Qloaders... not sure if thats what you want.

[BUBBASR.]

Well welcome back to the sport...Once it catchs you its hard to let go even if you quit in the past. My suggestion. forget about the new tech. New school is good and fun and I love playing and sadly for you pimping my guns. You can still play with the rest with a pgp pistol or any number of pumps. I still play pump more than I play semi just because I don't see the challenge behind as you said pour and play tactics. Im sure the phantom was around or maybe just taking digging in its roots when you were into the sport. If you do decide to stick to the pumping I would really recomend hitting up a used phantom. the things go for like 150 bucks now used and they are in my opinion just as tasty as the carters and sniper2s you probably used in your time. Although if your interested in getting another sniper look into the ccm line of guns chipley machine puts out some great pump cockers. the j2 is the 'fancy version' I had one for a while and it preformed like no other. You can actually sling alot of paint while still having the good pump feel to it. theres also a series 5 that is bulkier but still pump action with autotrigger. DEF look into those.

As far as the new guns...alot of hype. the newest fastest guns have cheater boards that ramp up in play...so if your pulling the trigger 5 times the gun is shooting 7 ect. Makes for fast walking of the trigger and tourny machines can't test for it. I personally had a alias timmy or timmie as you called it. just one of the newer intimidators. Ive also had the nyx matrix one of the finests matrixs out. played with a4s speeds vikings and most any top end gun you can think of and really the difference is preference. I preffer the feel of the matrix trigger....alot stickier felt like my nyx with egi board could outrun most and it was REALLY FAST...but it was also about 800 pounds and somewhat of a gas hog. Compare it to my later alias which weighed under 2 pounds and could sling paint with the best of them its hard to know what you like. If I were to jump back into tourney paintball I would get a dm4 or wased and aced tequila sunrise trix...why because they are fast...they have the fastest and nicests eye systems avalible and when you are playing at that level and you can lane with 20- balls in a second you need to be sure one of them doesn't break.

The new gas is nothing to worry about. co2 is cold and old. its great for rec play I still shoot crossman 12grams with my nightmare same technology from in 89 when the gun came out. but with these faster guns you can use compressed air which doesn't go into a liquid it doesn't freeze and its clean as hell. So when your electronics are pumping thousands of pounds of gas through the gun they don't get guncked up. Im sure you knew that regulating air=consistancy. just like how back in the day everyone threw palmers regs on there gun to stabalize the gun. if you are constantly shooting 300 fps on the nose then the balls should fly closer togeather...so with new tanks you can get amazing regs that recharge fast enough to feed over 25 balls per second and thats awesome. so you have a reg that can feed fast enough and consitant that means your gas no longer a problem. same with loaders. no one uses box loaders now they have high tech aggitated loaders like the halo which feed the gun at the needed speed.

its all hype and technology...if you plan on playing in tourneys...you will need the technology...if your playing in the woods go low tech less noise less weight more fun.

any questions my chat info is under my name.

[Zynister]

The difference between Imps and Timmies, or most low/mid level marker and a high end marker is weight, looks, and speed. Imps weigh more than timmies, are bigger, and are capped at 17 bps with vision and timmies go 25 bps. If I were you and you wanted to play woods, and be less of the spray and pray paintball hype, I would go with a Phantom pump marker, or a base Autococker. Pump guns are more challenging, use less paint, and if you get good on a pump, once you get a fast electro you will be much better. I like cockers for woods, because they are quiet, and fairly cheap, but good guns.

[BichSlapinWorr]

Originally Posted by Shadymxcn
For the most part the best barrels are the FREAK, Evil Pipe, or the empire barrel kit. No matter the barrel you get i suggest you get a Kit.

No those arent the best..you just named the most popular/hyped barrel kits out there. There are much better quality ones, even though they are more expensive.

-Match Stik
-Stiffi/CCM Carbon Fiber
-Poison Arrow

These are all kits, Multiple Bore sized Backs and sometimes Fronts. Good Singular Barrels are : Dye Ultralight-The Bore Size around .689 . This is a little on the expensive side, good quality none the less. JnJ Ceramic and CP 1 peices are all good quality and pretty cheap...

Just wanted to clear that up, and also i like to rant about small details that make me annoyed.

[Alpha]

Xcess, if you have ANY questions WHATSOEVER, I'm on aim until 10:30. my AIM name is The NightHawk x. I'm in the mood for helping

[Alpha]

Originally Posted by Xcess

Thanks for the responses. From my research, in addition to these responses, so far this is what I have come up with.

HPA = Good
Qloader = Good
Neon/pastel jerseys = Bad (maybe that's more taste then research )

paintguns still shoot like any low velocity smoothbore with a round ball in other words about as accurate as throwing bricks.

Still lots of hype and the market is still being driven by young suburban wannabies with mommy+daddies credit card. That's good for the sport I guess...lots of easy money in that market. If they could just tie in sex...they should mill boobs into these space guns and clean up. I should call Bob Long! He could call it the por*o-pimp intimidator!

It looks like the top guns are intimidators or angels from what I can see. I'll shudder to shoot one of these liberachi guns but if I keep them hidden until I'm on a paintball field I guess I'll survive.

Autocockers seem nice if a little on the slow side. Smartparts Shocker and Imps seem like a good option too. There are a lot of other guns that I'm weeding through but right now they are all fading into a neon insectlike blur.

The DM4 is a 'marker' made by dye (and by the way, feel free to call it a gun when your amoungst other paintballers. We tend to know what you're tlaking about ). The DM4 is arguably the best out there right now. I'm not sure how fast, but your looking at well over (and I mean well oveR) 20 balls per second.

The DM4 is an 1100 dollar gun (there was a recent price drop), and you can't even think about usign a greavity fed hopper on something new like this, or any high end electropneumatic guns out there. The HAlo B and Q-loader are arguably the two best out there. Although there is the reloader B, made by Empire. Empire is a relatively new company spawned by NAtional Pball Supply (they've been around for a while, no?). Empire is exactly what its name implies. It owns. I love all their products. They do make two timmies. The Lasoya Timmy, and the Empire TImmy, both very nice. Anyways, EMpire makes the Reloader B, which is their versian of a Halo. They also make the Reloader, which is their versian of a 12 volt revolution(revvy for short), made by Viewloader.

Viewloader was bought out by Brass eagle recently and their products have declined a lot. BRass EAgle makes a 19 dollar marker and several other very cheap guns. They are beginner guns, adn they generally suck. Their products have become pretty much jokes, except for rainmakers, which can very much hold their own. I guess you get what you pay for though. But since brass eagle bought out Viewloader, the quality of the revvy shells and their overall products have turned into crap.

WGP (Bob orr's line) came out with a new 05 line of autocockers. Except you might compare then to spyders. While they feature closed bolt and everything, they don' have a removable RAM and from what most people are sying to me now, they look like they're going to stink. But don't rule them out just yet!

Eclipse, a company that makes the eblade, just amde the eblade 2. The ebladde is a SWEET trigger. I mean you just blow on it and you'll shoot. ITs a hair trigger and you can walk it very fast.

Your coming from the pump era so I'm going to assume you don't know much abotu walking. Well, I'm almost sure you know what fanning is. WAlking is like fanning, its just a technique to shoot faster. You just walk your fingers on the trigger.. Its that easy. I can get up to 18bps by walking, some people can get into the 30s.

Anyways, the eblade is for autocockers only.

Mags haven't changed much, which is why people sitll love or hate them as much as they used to. They have a level 10 bolt, which eliminates chopping altogethor. You can stick your finger in teh feedneck and shoot and your finger wont break or be hurt at all. They also have the X-valve, which is just a valve formags that are capable of 26+bps without dropoff. But the marker itsself can't go that fast.

MAgs are getting the deadlywind hair trigger, which is basicly their version of an eblade, but its mechanical not electric.

And don't be afraid, paintball isn't all speedball. ITs branched off into two groups. Recball and tourneyball. REcball does include speedball, and I personally love speedball. I think its very hard and fast. But I still love the woods.

Woods play hasn't changed one bit (even though I was never in the olden days :P) from what I know. Scenario paintball is still out there, and there are those of us who paint our guns camo and wear BDU's paintballing. Check out the newest badassest scenario markers. www.rap4.com . Real action markers. Yes those are paintball markers. But they are ,43 caliber. Everything now is .68 caliber. But raps are .43 caliber...

IT sounds like you knwo what your doing for the most part.. So as far as suggesting a marker, I'm going to say go with your gut. For mid range, I'd suggest a mag, cocker, mabe even an impulse.

Again, if you have any questions, I'm here. I'm only 15, but I am new school adn can help you with anything you might need.

Paintball is still pretty much the same. I'm holding my SL-68 II in my lap right now.

[braka]

If you want to shoot the best because it's supposed to be the best, grab any of the high end Intimidators or custom DM4s.. and the DM5s will be out soon as well.

Having said that, there will still be a lot of options with those two markers. Probably the fastest way to aquaint yourself with the new technology is to spend some time at any of the major tournaments. There will be reps from the major companies demo'ing products and you can see what the pros are using.

Welcome back and welcome to the forum.

[Xcess]

I haven't quite decided on a gun yet...but I have ruled out getting a pump. I won't defer to anyones knowledge of pump guns, and I know their weaknesses. Even back in the day there were some people wanting "stock only" matches with only PGP's allowed. None of those new fangled "auto" triggers. Even then most players realised, as with all comparable sports, equipment gives an edge. All things being equal (including the players skill) a semi will beat a pump. Been there done that. I can always shoot a semi as slow as a pump but I can never shoot a pump as fast as a semi and realistically the semi is just as accurate as a pump.

There is still a place for pumps...that place just isn't in my hands.

So for my proposed equipment (update)
Guns = angel, timmy, DM4/5 (still open to ideas here)
loader = Qloader or Empire B (still open to ideas here)
barrel set = poison (still open to ideas here)
footwear = Adidas GSR-9 (cuz I already have them )
clothing = No idea, prolly just bdus, although some of the JT pants look neat
Harness = Depends on the loader choice
Other stuff = Not sweating the small stuff yet

[Soljah]

for the barrel set get a freak set
and halo b owns q loader anyday

for guns if you dont want to spend so much, go with a pro carbine for like 175(just an estimate). These guns look like a pump but are semi automatic. They have the tippmann durability and look pretty cool.