Smart Parts Freak w/ 14" AA Front. The Hammerhead is noticable more accurate and the marker uses less air with this barrel than the Freak with both adjusted to shoot at 285 fps.
Marker Setup:
ANS GX3 'cocker, HPA, WGP Hinge, Hammerhead w/ Fin, Revy w/ Turbo X board.
Recommended Paintballs:
You can shoot anything with this barrel.
Strengths:
Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy.
Weaknesses:
You'll have no more excuses.
Review:
Three of us used the Hammerhead w/ a Fin this weekend for the first time. All of us shoot ANS GX3s but play different positions and styles.
We were shooting 10" Hammerheads on 1 1/4" fins. (The fin acutally measures longer than this - this is the "active" length). This makes the overall lenth 11 1/4". We each have a "Fin Kit" which gets you three Fins - Hammerhead lets you pick the sizes you want in the kit. We've added a fourth fin to provide a slightly broader ball diameter range giving us: 0.690", 0.688", 0.066", and 0.683" Fins. (We also tried a 14" Hammerhead on the practice range. Accuracy was also excellent although not quite as good as the 10". It also seemed to take a bit more air - which should be expected from the longer barrel.)
First of all, the materials, machining, and fit & finish are all excellent. The barrel has a fine spiral rifling and angled porting near the tip. This is some of the nicest machining I've seen. It's clear that they've taken time to get the product "done" before they sell it.
Four cases of paint (different makes), speedball and woods games, front-back play, attack-defense: no barrel breaks, no chops, lots of kills.
We've been shooting Freaks and AAs for some time. The Hammerheads are very clearly more accurate. On the practice range, I found myself focusing my shots not on a particular target, but on a bolt on the target - and repeatably putting paint on the bolt. In speedball, I'd post on someone and be able to consistently put shots right where I wanted them - about an inch off the edge of the bunker - shot after shot after shot. In the woods, the accuracy at long range was also excellent (defending a hill). This is even more impressive considering the compact package: 11 1/4" overall lenght.
We took turns firing the markers and also being down-range, and switching between the Freak and Hammerhead. The Hammerhead was louder to the shooter, but quieter to the guy being shot. It seems that the angled porting helps direct part of the sound back toward the shooter, making it quieter down-range ... and it works.
I was a bit skeptical at first that anything could significantly out perform my Freak. OK, I was wrong, the Hammerhead/Fin combination is clearly more accurate than my Freak, used less air, and cost less.
Conclusion:
I've never shot anything as accurate as this setup. If you have the money to buy a milti-part barrel kit, buy a Hammerhead and a Fin Kit. Period.
Since 1986 i have seen every kind of paintball barrel come and go; brass, nickle, aluminum, steal, rifled, ported, spiral ported, different internal diameters, slotted, etc... And I can tell you guys with all sincerity that internal rifling doesn't work for the following reasons.
1) You can't rifle a round paintball and expect it to go straight, when spin is induced on a paintball it spins unpredictably. Thats why curve balls in baseball work so well. A bullet is different, that is a cylindrical object that stabilizes in flight.
2) How are you suppose to shoot thru a break if paint is trapped within the groves of a internally rifled barrel. Remember ARMSON, they tried something like that in the mid 90's and when you broke a ball (which was every other time because of the stress imposed on the shell as the rifling DUG into it) you "had" to squeegee it.
3) Paintball's are not perfectly round and have fluid in them. How can a uneven water balloon fly straight if it is spinning?
4) There is a "Video Clip" circulating on the Internet that shows the hammerhead being shoot right after a break. Well you will notice that the next 10 or so balls are ALL over the place then "mysteriously" the barrel fades into a different part of the screen and the trees are blowing harder and the barrel shoots good again. The reason for this is they squeegeed the barrel and then did a little video fade work to make you think that it was shot clean?!?!
If you don't take my 16+ years of experience, go ahead and throw down $125.99 ;-)
I Also Think Mradeventure is right Think of it as a bad football throw it might fly straight for a while but the ends up wobbling and much less accurate and thats just in theroy when you shoot a paintball with rifle like abilitys unless the paintball is solid, because while the shell is spining the internal mass is not so think about this take a cup of water and sping it fast by setting it on a table and grasping the outside of the cup and spin it, you notice that the water doesn't move much, same with the paintball the spining in a bullet is what makes it accurate not the power of the shot, so if the paintballs paint doesn't spin and the shell does the centrifical force won't make it more accurate so it's impossible rifle-izing paintball barrels won't ever work (unless the paintballs are solid i think rufus t-balls might work try it out with them since they are solid i think)
A number of these "10" reviews are OBVIOUSLY company reps, where the hell are the review mods?!? Reviews like this one, by people like this jerkoff are exactly what render the reviews on this site utterly worthless. I just heard they're making them in Phantom threads, oh plz...
i agree with rifling being pointless and ineffective, but unlike the cup of water the liquid mass on the inside of the ball is changed much more easily than the liquid inside the cup. More mass, more force needed to change the position of the object. The paint on the inside of the paintball is also much much thicker than water, so it goes with the the shell. If it were the case that the spinning of the shell did not effect the path of the paintball the ball would shoot straight each time, which it doesn't in the case of a previous chop or flatline barrel. The laws of physics would not allow the flatline to work as it does. It's not the most accurate barrel but it puts a spin on the ball which previous naysayers acclaim to be impossible. Just a little scientific and critical thinking from a paintball player.
I have never used this barrel before, and I will never use this barrel. My friend has one with the exact setup you decribed. He claims it to be point and shoot, but it never has hit me ONCE in any of the games we've played (even when I'm standing out in the open completely still in a one on one match) from a distance of more than 50 ft, though it has come quite close in such circumstances. There are so many barrels that have similar effects that are considerably cheaper than this, so even if rifling DID benifit paintballs I could purchase a much cheaper barrel that does the same thing.
quote:Originally posted by plungergoat I have never used this barrel before, and I will never use this barrel. My friend has one with the exact setup you decribed. He claims it to be point and shoot, but it never has hit me ONCE in any of the games we've played (even when I'm standing out in the open completely still in a one on one match) from a distance of more than 50 ft, though it has come quite close in such circumstances. There are so many barrels that have similar effects that are considerably cheaper than this, so even if rifling DID benifit paintballs I could purchase a much cheaper barrel that does the same thing.
