well
Originally posted by 32degreeballerI.E.
i turned up the output pressure on the regulator, now it runs 300-325, and shoots much better, but that was with the stock barrel on it, which has much less porting
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32degreeballer: If you're 300-325 is psi, then you should probably listen to Skeetmaster (kinda) and try chrono-ing your gun with both barrels. If your 300-325 is fps then you need to turn it down and play with different types of balls. The most important thing to pay attention to is your ball-to barrel fit, and pretty much every batch of balls is slightly different, but certain brands tend to stay consistent (large, med, or small), round, not-so-round. Your gun can shoot great with one barrel, but change the ball size and it might shoot crappy with that same barrel. That's why people pay big money for those barrel kits.
In my opinion, any well made barrel has to potential to shoot great, and most barrels out there from the major manufacturers are pretty well made. You just have to find the right combo that works for you. I find that for open bolt guns, larger bore barrels seem to work better, all around and for closed bolt guns, smaller bore is consistently better. If you're talking to someone who plays Frontman on a team all the time and he only walks on with two pods, pretty much ignore his barrel choice... he's always too close to someone to really know if his paint is flying straight or not. When Little John was testing his barrel system and working out the prototypes, I was discovering why Bob was in favor of super large bore barrels for his Intimidator...it was very hot and humid at his house and I was buying his crap paint from him so I ended up shooting a 0.700" bore barrel and loving it...I asked LJ what he was shooting (well, he was shooting the better paint, but it was still hot and humid enough that soft balls were getting trapped under my paddle and burning out my hopper...that's also why I went to the weedwacker paddle arms) and he was shooting a 0.689" barrel...go figure.
Also, in my experience, if you're going from a smaller to a larger size (using the same or less porting, and same ball size and inner diameter barrel size) in the 8-16" range, then you'll get an increase in velocity...after 16" your results kinda vary alot but the longer barrels past 16" will tend to actually drop your velocity, if you don't change any settings on your gun.
In my old age, I value reliability over accuracy now so I shoot an open bolt gun with a wide bore set of barrels so that a balls comes out and hits what I'm aiming at, pretty much everytime I pull the trigger (okay, sometimes I have to pull the trigger a few times). Back in the days when I was hunting for the best accuracy, I shot closed bolt guns with tight-bore barrels, but sometimes I'd have to change barrels once or twice during the day 'cause the balls changed size (usually swells) and the reason I knew to change barrels was because I started chunking balls. When I started to notice that this "chunking" was causing us to lose games, I started searching for more reliability...which leads me to where I am now...although the new Shocker does catch my eye...I still remember when Diablo first came out and they sponsored us and I was limited to 200 rounds and 20 of them were at me feet in one of my bunkers 'cause the balls were too small for my closed-bolt gun's barrel (if you haven't noticed, I'm saying that open bolt guns tend to have a greater tolerance of differences in ball sizes)...but I noticed that I'm writing too much so I'd better get off my soapbox...have fun with whatever you're shooting and don't sweat the details once you find a reliable setup...
Ray
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