Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

[CBarker]

Evening folks - first time poster be gentle and I have tried the search button!

Been trawling the site quietly for a while now, a friend of mine is heavily into airsoft and introduced me to it. I've always done wildfowling/clay pigeon with 12 bores and done a fair amount of paintball but am getting into it and want to start getting a loadout together.

Trouble i'm finding is i've searched the forums, read the acronym guide and a lot of posts but what'd be great is if anyone was able to put together a list of makes and some opinions on them? Whats cheap crap? whats unreliable? affordable/good value? expensive and worth it? expensive and not?!

Coming across lots of brand names when reading about loadouts and guns etc... but couldnt tell you much about any of them. Hard to find it in one place and looking over sites and shops it seems that price isnt always the best guide.

Or is there simply no general rule of thumb for each brand?

Cheers!

[Bachelarius]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

Haha, welcome mate. I think a safe place to start with is... what sort of guns or load-outs/impressions are you into?

Next question is, how mechnically sensible are you? Have you ever taken stuff appart for the fun of it/played with mechano/knex/lego technic etc?

Finally, where abouts are you based? Get to know your local crowd. Every site, society, team and group often has a airsmith/gun mech/botch job artist etc. who will very quickly become your bestest friend. I do not recommend becoming one however, it can be a real 'PITA', haha :P

Sad thing about airsoft is that a lot of the technology somewhat behind the times, when compared to, lets say paintball and in order to get high performance you need to be either very rich or very ingenious, haha.

As a few very general rules of thumb:

For a first rifle, avoid the more exotic rifles. Nothing more annoying than a part breaking and not being able to find a replacement.

I won't go into manufacturers yet as there are many of them and different manufacturers make different guns, all of which are at a different quality.

Second hand guns are amazingly cheap, much cheaper than new ones, but always run the risk of being worn out or faulty or downright broken. This forum is UK's largest trade forum, so a great place to get a cheap gun to get going with.

Same can be said for Chinese Guns, many need tweaking out of the box

Japanese and Taiwanese guns tend to be of a higher quality due to higher quality control, but cost more, often unreasonably more.

Take your hits, don't cheat call and be happy!

Welcome to the sad sport of grown men playing dress-up with overpriced toys! You probably won't want to leave any time soon :P

[CBarker]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

Cheers mate - yes still explaining it to the missus!

I am much more a fan of older weapons, I am a bit of a collector of antique WWII guns (deactivated) and 1800's guns. Favourite has always been the M1 carbine or the Garand - although from what I have seen these tend to be more pricey and maybe not the best start??

Have been looking at possible an M14 or even an m16 circa vietnam. Any suggestions?

I am in the Milton Keynes area (Finmere is the site my friend has recommended) and there is a local shop which wont mention here in case of mod wrath but only open 5 hours during the weekdays which is a pain for work.

Reasonably handy with mechanics long as I go slow - strip down a shotgun or a real K98 without problems.

Although getting the cheapest isnt a huge issue (who needs to eat anyway?!) obviously want to start slow and avoid all the gear and no idea. Already have use of a two tone 'm16 CQB' - looks like a stubby m16 to me for first few tries. I would quite like a blowback gun although figure these are more difficult to maintain?

Also had read somewhere that the battery setup for semi auto is more complicated? hearsay or geniune?

Any suggestions based on the above would be appreciated for decent places to look, good places to get gear by all means let me know here or PM. Also if anywhere runs newbie days i wouldnt mind hearing!

[Machaon]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

As was pointed out by Bachelarius, some different brands have their own niches. Some make brilliant versions of one model, and not-so-great versions of others. Many people would advise you to find the model of gun you most like, then ask around for general concensus on brand. That said, some people will stick by one brand whilst others around them tear it to shreds. Everyone is so different, and each of us has their own opinions, based on a whole plethora of factors.

Welcome to airsoft. It may be a bunch of people dedicated to dressing up and playing soldiers (not unlike being six years old, really), but it's expensive, and damned great fun!

[Caveira]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

The problem with manufacturers guides is that they degenerate into rants within about a millisecond.

Some people believe that you shouldn't eat for 6 months so you can buy a Systema. Others believe that the cheapest Chinese guns offer the best value for money. Most players will go for something in between, but as that's where most of the manufactures are priced, that's where most of the disagreements are.

In the end, they simply turn in a repetition of "my gun is the best" lists.

[delta1ukc]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

I would suggest as a starter weapon something from marui would be a good choice. Although there older stuff is well old by the newer stuff today, its reasonbly solid and reliable. Price wise, i would not nessercerliy say buy new, as mentioned there are always exellent deals to be had on here and they normally tend to come with mags batterys etc. To buy a marui AK as an example new would prob be in the region of £250. Now they are mainly plastic, but the outer barrels and external parts are metal. So basicly if you don't fall on it, or throw it down it should last you well. Also another good one from personal choice were the marui M16 VN models, very well built and mine lasted years. Finally all guns i get, new or not i generelly tighten everything up nice and tight.

My pers fave manafacturers are

Classic army - mid range prices, but very solid and good performing gun's
Marui - Have non of their new recoil series - but have had most of their previous models and are solid, reliable performers if a little pricey
Star-Ares - Very well built guns on all i have had, can be tempremental and need a bit of experience or tweaking and also quite expensive.

Hope that helps a little without going into too much detail. The key thing i would recomend is go to your local site, try some diff hire weapons and see what suit's you personally and ask diff players what they feel, most will willingly talk your ears off lol.

[Bachelarius]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

Best way to be! One of our guys is from the keynes area actually, apparently lives 5 min away from said shop, haha. Goes under the name of S3V3R on this forum and has had 2 m14s so far (a cyma I think and currently an Ares EBR)

M14's a great weapon to get going with actually, was originally going to be my first weapon as well, but ended up with something else. As far as makes for the m14 go, there are quite a few.

Starting with the obvious:

TM - Tokyo Marui
CA - Classic Army
G&G - Guay&Guay
Star/Ares (they may as well be the same company)
WE Tech - God knows what it stands for, doesn't even say on their website!
CYMA
Kart
AGM
...
I'm sure I've missed some.

Right off the bat I would say avoid star/ares, no matter how pretty they look! They tend to use a lot of their own parts which are very hard to replace on failure, so best leave that one until you know your way around the inside of a gun.

Probably the same for the WE Tech one. It is a gas blowback, so you need to keep buying gas for it and need to treat it to a LOT of maintenance. And it's rediculously expensive to boot.

So that leaves the rest. The two original systems are TM and G&G, difference between the two being the gearbox and magazine shape.

TM in its stock form, it is one of the most accurate rifles around, being a Japanese gun it is reliable, but tends to be limited to about 280fps velocity, due to Japanese Laws. Do not see this as a drawback however, it still outranges many other guns and tends to be used as a DMR. This would be a good choice to go for, if you are after a solid m14, with plenty of scope for future upgrades (e.g. convert to m21 sniper rifle etc)

CYMA, Kart and AGM are all copies of the TM, though not nearly as nice, both externally and internally, however the AGM has got some very nice reviews. Cyma's aren't bad either, though I found the one I held to be fairly plastic-y feeling. They do often tend to come over-lubed in the box however.

The G&G is an older design, which was then copied by CA.

Those are the makes, anyway. You CAN also get a real wood stock for them and a wide assortment of replacement parts, like rail kits, scope mounts and fancy pants stocks (EBR, Scout, JAE etc.), but that's all separate and costs many moneys.

Things to think about with this rifle are:

Where will you store the mags? They are fairly large, being 7.62 cal, but shorter than AK mags, so don't fit well in many of the 7.62 sized pouches. You need the m14 pouches, so you will probably need a molle vest to go with it.
It is a very long and fairly heavy rifle, will you be comfortable with that?
The gearbox can be a pain to work on, so best to do any internal upgrades all in one go.


And that's than on the m14s! haha. This sort of post can be done for pretty much any rifle type as well, just please don't ask me about m4s, we'll be here all night :P


Cheers, Nikolay.

[ZX12R A1]

Re: Airsoft Manufacturers/Makes Guide

First welcome to having a negative bank balance its a growing club

As mentioned above regardless of what is posted by people there will always be someone who disagree's and will come up with a my mates, sisters, brothers, uncles, dogs, cat once told me it was crap. So please expect lots of comments from people who disagree with comments made.

You will also get a lot of "Moon Shooters" who's gun outranges out shoots out performs and is always the bestest gun ever ever ever better than a real M4 honestly mate.

You have already been given sensible advice above and I will just add my little bit.

You first need to decide what you personally like which it would appear you have done and then try all options possible of that and decide what you like the most and what you are willing to pay for it.

Chances are regardless of what make you buy it can always be improved from how it comes out of the box. In my own personal opinion you do get what you pay for.

Out of the box as your first ever AEG for a sensible price with good build quality and finish and reliability I would suggest as below bearing in mind they may not make exactly what you want.
TM, ICS, G&P, Ares/Star, CA & G&G
Each one has its own strengths and are in my list on overall merit bearing in mind I change out the parts that dont perform well.

All of the above I have had personal experiance of either owning or using so feel comfortable suggesting on that basis.

There are other manufacturers which are also good but are either much more expensive or tend to make much more modern guns.

Whatever you buy and for whatever reasons you can always replace and upgrade parts. The only supplier which can be an issue with gun p0rn is ICS as they tend not to play well with others but for me the quality of the products they make is exceedingly good anyway.