Okay first things first. I spend months of research on things like this before purchasing anything. For instance, i was going to build myself a computer, and i spent close to 3 months before purchasing a part. This was no different. I was in the situation of finding the "Best sub-$300 paintball gun on the market"
So I started research. I looked at the mini, etha, crossover, rail, and eXTCy. I made, charts, graphs and excel sheets. I read countless reviews. Finally i decided my plan. I was going to buy this gun and upgrade the crap out of it. For me, upgrading is the most fun you can have with something. Buying parts to make it that much smoother, quieter, more efficient, ect.. I know this is basically "what the ion should have been", but i wanted to go above and beyond that. many people will say, "well if you're going to buy a $250 gun and put another $300 into it, you might as well just buy something thats $600!" To this i say, WHAT'S THE FUN IN THAT??? Upgrading a gun makes it feel truly "yours". Okay enough of that spiel...
I'm now going to talk about each aspect of the gun in turn.
Barrel- The stock barrel is a .693 13 inch, ported, ion threaded barrel. There's three rows of porting with 7 ports each. The boring quality is pretty darn nice. I'd say it's on-par with something like a CP one piece. Oh, and no matter what color you get it will always be a dust-black barrel.
feedneck- The stock feedneck is a hard-to-remove, allen key clamping, ion XE threaded feedneck. It rises 1 and (1/8) inches above the top of the body. It fits my pinokio snugly, and I've had no problems with it. You should know that if you want to upgrade it, you must really wrench on this thing really hard and possibly need to apply heat because it ships from gog locktited in place.
regulator- The stock regulator is the same exact regulator that is on the Luxe (a $1500 gun)! it has been very consistent for me, and its placement allows me (with very large hands i might add) to grip it fully, without cramping my thumb in between it and the trigger frame. The straight fitting is on the very bottom, allowing for a clean run from the asa (not upwards curved). One should note that if you need to disassemble the regulator for any reason, you will need a pair of .038'' (1mm) retaining ring pliers. Just a heads up. I got mine for $10 on amazon from Klein Tools.
asa- the stock asa is a dust black, knob-on-off, direct mounted asa. The fitting comes out the left side, and it is connected to the reg via a 4'' piece of steel braided tubing. The stock asa is pretty sharp, and can cut your tank o-rings if you're not careful. Just hold the gun so the asa is vertically facing up, then screw the tank in slowly. then screw in the knob until it's gassed up. Also, don't screw the asa know ALL the way in, because it can shred a little o-ring in there. An easy fix is just to screw it in until you hear no more leaking air, then screw it in another 1/2 of a turn and you're good to go.
trigger- the stock trigger is actually not so great. It's a plastic, pin-mounted, wave-style trigger. Many people consider this to be the eXTCy's weakest point. I agree, but a new player would defiantly be A-OKAY using it. There is some side to side play, but it really isn't horrible. It is two way adjustable (pre-travel and post-travel).
board- The stock board is the blackheart board. It has 12 modes, which give a wide variety of choices to use. You can adjust the dwell, BPS cap (coarse and fine at up to 20 BPS except uncapped semi), eye settings, burst count, rebound settings, first shot drop off compensation (FSDO), and a few other finer adjustments. In my experience, I've found it performs admirably. It is technically waterproof and can be (BUT NOT RECOMMENDED) underwater! The infrared eyes work great to prevent chops, and the ease of use make this an awesome board. It takes maybe 10 minutes to learn all of it's ins and outs. This board does eat batteries though. If yo play a lot of paintball, I highly recommend going to gog's website and picking up some rechargeable batteries. They may seem expensive at first, but they will pay for themselves in a short period of time. Energizer and Duracell sell their batteries as "9 volt" when they really start at 8.4 volts, and quickly taper off. Those batteries are also about 200mAh. The rechargeable ones from gog are both TRUE 9.0v, and 700mAh. They last a VERY long time, and can be recharged quickly.
Okay first things first. I spend months of research on things like this before purchasing anything. For instance, i was going to build myself a computer, and i spent close to 3 months before purchasing a part. This was no different. I was in the situation of finding the "Best sub-$300 paintball gun on the market"
So I started research. I looked at the mini, etha, crossover, rail, and eXTCy. I made, charts, graphs and excel sheets. I read countless reviews. read more