Beaker - this info, that was a response to a Angel user's email to WDP may be of interest to you and help you sleep a little better at night
"The decision to change barrel thread has already taken place and was not taken lightly I can assure you. Our original design plan was to be able to reduce the size and weight of the Angel and at the same time also go to cocker threads during this size reduction process, however when our design team started to look at the removal of material from the body of the marker it soon became apparent that we would not be able to achieve what we wanted to if we changed to cocker threads, in fact we would not have been able to reduce the weight of the Angel at all if we had done this as we would have had to actually add material in some areas to incorporate cocker threads. The reason we wanted to reduce weight and size in the first place was because we had listened to what our customers were saying at tournaments, on various forums, in conversations, and e-mail correspondence with us, they wanted a smaller and lighter Angel. We understand people may have already got barrel kits with the old thread pattern and we also knew that no after market barrels would be available in this thread size. We did not want our customers not to have an alternative barrel option available at launch so we informed the barrel manufacturers such as DYE, Custom Products, Stiff, etc of this thread change several months in advance so they could have product available at the time of the guns launch so our customers should they require could purchase barrels of differing length and bore size without any delay ( DYE and Custom Products had product available at launch) , we also informed our own techs of this change as we knew that they would be wanting to produce a thread convertor to allow older style Angel barrels to be used on the new thread pattern by way of a convertor ( I think Ken/Performanceangel.com and Robert/fixmyangel.com actually have these arriving shortly if they don't already have them).
As a manufacturer you constantly try to improve your product. If things can be improved by change, then surely change is the correct way forward? The old barrel thread was dictating the size of the Angel to our designers. They were restricted due to the lead in shank on the original barrel thread as it dictated the length of the front section of the gun to us and no matter what we did with the guns internals, we could not reduce the length of the gun from the feed neck forwards. Changing the barrel thread to its new thread pattern has allowed us to remove material from the body of the marker, resulting in a reduction in both size and weight, and has also opend up new areas for our design team to work in that they did not have access to before. It was a necessary stage in the development and evolution of the Angel that will allow us to progress and develop the product further.
If you have any other questions on this matter please feel free to contact me I will be happy to answer them.
All the best,
Frazer Colley."
