alrighty. I'll tell you what I know, and I know what I know because I sell them. Tippman 98: rugged marker. leave it in a bucket of mud for a week, and it'll still fire. out of the box it needs a lot of extras to make it a top piece of kit. one drawback, maintenancewise, is when you DO have to take it apart, it's a nightmare. you have to remove a pile ofscrews to get to the internals, and have to put them back in again afterwards. I often hear our technical guy cussin' and fussin' about them when he finds out that after putting a 98 back together again, it's still faulty, cause he has to go through the entire procedure again.
Spyders: pretty good marker, and very popular (all models). pretty easy to maintain, and not very expensive. great for the starting 'baller. however, as good as all markers and manufacturers use the same system for attaching things like a bottom line to the marker (2 screws that go into two holes in the bottom of the trigger frame). for some reason Kingman decided to go against the grain and put these holes diagonally instead of the usual in a row. this does not in any way effect the way the marker performs, but it does mean that you can only use spyder specific add ons, or buy convertors. I personally am very put off by this, but that's just me.
Piranha: again a pretty good marker, and the luxury models come pretty complete for an out of the box gun. maintenancewise these markers are a dream. just push out the pushpin at the rear of the body, and voila, you've got all the workybits in your hand. you can have this baby field stripped and cleaned IN FIVE MINUTES!!!!! absolutely worth the money! the only downside is that sometimes the sear and the hammer tend to wear a bit quickly, but these parts can be replaced in less than five minutes (although you do ofcourse have to buy the replacements). also the marker is very well crafted. just look at the way the power feed is welded to the body. nice......! (not that I'd trade in my Angel ofcourse
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all in all, I'd go for the piranha, but that is just a personal opinion. my advice: see if you can play a game with each of the models, and go for the one that you feel most comfortable with. cosmetics do not make a marker work better, but NEVER EVER buy a marker that you do not like the looks of, you will not feel comfy when playing! so, just test them if you can, and decide on YOUR experiences, and not what some person on a forum tells you
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hope this helped.
