I have tried many high-end barrels on the market. This barrel has by far blown me away.
1). Quite simply, the most accurate barrel on the market (period)
2). Build quality, fit and finish is perfect.
3). You can custom order colored tips at no extra charge.
4). No o-rings to deal with like the freak
5). The alignment of the bore insert makes a perfect seal.
6). Mirror finish is accurate and doesn't scratch. Buffs well (clean it with car wax)
This barrel is super-quiet. It is not the quietest, but anything quieter usually has 18 inches of straght porting. Only my A/A 16 inch is quieter, but I hate that barrel compared to this. The Scepter uses less air by being more efficient, making it quieter.
Super-accurate AND Super-quiet AND Super-efficient leaves nothing to be desired from this barrel.
Conclusion:
I live near Powerlyte, so I was able to go directly to them to pick mine up. The people there were very nice and helpful. They told me all of the details about how the Scepter worked.
The Scepter combines a high quality mirror finish on every insert using military gun-barrel honing technology. Only powerlyte and dye have a honing process this high quality. Unfortunately, Dye barrels have too much porting and don't have adjustable bore. Gun honing involves a long system of heating and tempering until the barrel comes out with a mirror surface and perfect caliber.
Smart Parts Freak System uses a cheap technology called "extruding" to hone their barrels. First, a block of aluminum is dragged over a .68 caliber cylinder of metal to produce a nice cirle with a rough surface. They polish them to a simulated mirror finish, but a bore tester proves that SP barrels don't have what it takes to be as accurate as Powerlyte.
Powerlyte's innovative seal system creates a perfect seal between insert and tip. Freak systems use o-rings which create a flawed seal and vibrate the barrel when fired.
Some might argue that replacing the back-end of a barrel (like the Evil Pipe) is better than an insert, but what they don't know is replacing the back-end doesn't seal the barrel as well as Powerlyte's system of locking the insert into place.
Powerlyte's patented Side-by-Side porting is not only amazingly quiet, but insanely efficient. I have never seen anything like it. Freaks use spiral porting, which wastes gas and can cause paint to spin to the right. The Evil pipe uses 15 degree porting, which might look cool, but makes the paint bounce around at the end of the barrel, which is bad.
I would also like to talk about the Speedline version of the scepter (single bore). The speedline is compareable to the boomstick, only the speedline is more efficient and has more bore choices. Also, Powerlyte has better customer service than Dye. This coming from a guy who Dye shipped his order FOUR MONTHS late and still charged.
If you can't shell out the money for a Scepter, then the Powerlyte Speedline One-Piece is a great single-bore barrel for under $60, with all of the benefits of the Scepter minus the bore sizing (which is still VERY important, so make sure it'll work)
In closing, the Scepter is better than:
1). Freak
2). Evil Pipe
3). Boomstick
4). Any adjustable bore barrel that forces you to buy seperate backs (aka, Longbow)
Buy this barrel if you want to take your game to the next level.
Buy this barrel if you want your paint to shoot out like darts.
Buy this barrel if it is not your current barrel.
UPDATE - The barrel is rock solid on the field and in the equipment bag. However, The inserts are fragile when not locked in the barrel so be carefull storing them. I had an insert laying in my garage 6 feet from the hard concrete. It fell and dented the end. Of course, the barrel still rules since that was my own ignorance.
Rating:
10 out of 10
Last edited on Saturday, March 5th, 2005 at 6:50 pm PST
I own both and I can say it's lighter than the titanium longbow. You might like the hardbore coating in the longbow, but that's your call. You might want to consider price too.
I'm sorry, but the Longbow does NOT have a smoother coating than the scepter. The Longbow also uses extruded hone technology (see review) as opposed to the scepter's superior gun honed technology used by the military. The Longbow's apparent "smooth" coating is just a cheap way to cover up the minor imperfections caused by it's honed technology. No amount of coating makes up for poor honing, plus it breaks down over time.
Oh yeah, and "harder honing" is just from the eye of the beholder. It just looks harder because the scepter's inserts are so insanely light!
i'm going to get this kit for my Angel. BTW I own an Evil Pipe. I havent had any problems with it at all. But I would agree that the Scepter kit is a superior barrel set.
can you shoot thru barrel breaks? that was my biggest complaint with the evil pipe kit. Thissounds like a very nice kit, how does it compare to a stiffi kit? I kind of jumped onto the carbon fiber train and haven't found anything better yet. please enlighten me.
I got the Scepter kit about a week ago. Ive played a few games with it. I had 1 barrel break. From what I could tell after shooting about 15-20 balls after the break it seemed to me that I regained a little bit of accuracy. However, afterwards I took off the barrel there was still a considerable amount of paint in the barrel. So I don't think that this barrel shoots through breaks very well. But when you don't have any breaks this kit is awesome.
I've never had paint break in mine b/c I use an Intimidator, but it broke in my friend's cocker and it was pretty nasty. Gotta swap it, no shooting through. But it swabs very easily.
As for the CCM being quieter.... I wouldn't know, but 5" of porting is way too much. All that does it slow the ball down, meaning it takes more force to push it through the barrel. So 14" with 5" porting means you have to up your gun pressure slightly. 12" with 2" of porting is ideal efficiency for guns firing around 280-300 FPS according to Custom Products testing. I prefer silence through efficiency.
I've got an 12" Ultralite and a 14" Stiffi and i've noticed that by switching to my Stiffi, i had as much as 10fps increase. I really like my Stiffi. :D
I say go with Stiffi since i got barrel breaks and all you have to do is to shoot a couple of times downwards and you'll be shooting straight again. Make sure you get a good bore size. I got .687 since paintballs are usually around that size.
This is a great review! you compare the barrel to other great barrels! thats what people what to no...how good is this barrel compared to another barrel...and how good is it over all! your the type of guy who makes this site awsum.
thanks for doing this review!
