The purpose of this document is to share my experiences with the Silverback SRS Covert. The SRS being a new and very unique replica raised lots of questions in the community. Here I will address many aspects of the SRS and show from my experience that not only is it very pretty, but it's also a perfectly skirmishable airsoft sniper rifle. When I began writing this I had fielded the rifle two times. I will continue to update this as I continue to use the SRS.
UPDATE 20160102: Cylinder Volume and Barrel Lengths.
UPDATE 20160128: Welded Bolt Handle and Reloading Gyfcat.
Update 20160325: Upgraded Sear Spring
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Build quality and aesthetics.
All the metallic parts are CNCed and the quality is exceptional. All receivers have individual serial numbers which are also listed in the manual and on the box. I am personally the proud owner of Silverback SRS #456. The plastic portions of the body are high quality and are on par with the Ares Amoeba nylon fiber bodies. All the important parts like the sears are made from carbon steel, insuring that they will have a much longer life than the stock VSR-10 sears we are familiar with.
Nothing wobbles. I have seen on this forum before that they briefly held the SRS and noticed the barrel wobbles. However, I believe that the barrel was improperly secured. When tightening the barrel in place, on the right side of the SRS there are 4 screws that need to be tightened. I noticed that if one simply tightens one after another, you will have a loose barrel. To solve this, tighten the screws finger tight one after another, then, return to the first and tighten again. You'll notice that the barrel can be finger tightened significantly more. Repeat this process with the rest of the screws until you can no longer finger tighten the screws.
Bolt and Priming
This is one of the unique features of the SRS. While it does allow the SRS to have a very authentic bullpup function there is a detriment in terms of the priming motion. When you pull the bolt back, there is no resistance and this allows the sears to catch onto the back of the piston. Pushing the bolt forward allows the back of the cylinder to compress the spring.
When you first take SRS out of the box, the priming motion is terrible. However, there are two remedies to this. The first thing is to lube the cylinder. The lube provided by silverback is a silicone paste and will significantly improve the ease of priming when copious amounts of it are used. I prefer to use a more viscous silicone oil. You'll notice after a couple hundred shots that the silicone paste turns into a greyish metallic gunk. What I believe is happening is the repeated priming motion scrapes the walls along where the cylinder travels. You'll also see that the cylinder and the cylinder head also gets scraped. This is the second remedy, as you break it in, it'll be easier to prime. Once you clean out all the gunk with some paper towels and such and apply your silicone oil, you'll notice that your SRS is easier to prime. Currently, my bolt travel is so smooth that with the trigger pulled and the bolt handle turned up, the bolt will travel back and forth just by tilting the SRS slightly.
A vertical or angled foregrip may help some get the properly leverage to ease priming.
I also found that replacing the spring with a non-airsoft spring also eased priming. See Spring/Power Upgrades Section
Worn in bolt and body
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Spring/Power Upgrades
The SRS uses AEG springs. Silverback posted a video of how to do a spring upgrade on the SRS that you can find on youtube. Out of the box it shot 1.7J. Replacing the spring with what I believe was an m130 brought my power up to 2.3J. Personally I found the spring weight perfectly manageable when priming.
I have stopped using airsoft springs in the SRS. While AEG springs work, they rub against the spring guide/plunger rod making the prime more difficult and possibly decreasing performance. To avoid this I used a spring from McMaster Carr part number 9637k26. This spring has a larger coil diameter than an AEG spring. After cutting this spring to slightly longer than the length of the cylinder and bending the ends inwards, the spring fit perfectly into the cylinder. With this length of spring of spring I measured 2.2J with a significantly easier prime than before. With longer lengths this "k26" spring, I also achieved up to 3 joules of power with of course a much more difficult prime.
Shortened K26 spring with AEG spring
![Image]()
Hop-up and performance
Another unique feature of the SRS is that it does not use a conventional hop up arm. Instead, it has two screws that come in and two different angles to adjust whatever kind of contact you are using with the BB. In theory, this would allow you to correct hop for windage as well as more and less hop. Amazingly, and I had strong doubts about this, it works. In the stock form, SRS provides a pretty standard bucking with a standard hop-up mound. This bucking is nothing special and you'll get the standard range you see with stock hop up nubs albeit with the advantage of being able to adjust for windage.
I'm an R-hop user and I really like my soft nubs. However, to my amazement, the SRS hop-up chamber works perfectly with R-hops. Not only did I have an R-hop for increased range and accuracy, but I was also able to adjust for windage by tweaking just one side of the hop.
Though hop performance is a bit difficult to objectively measure in airsoft, the best comparison I can make is to my other sniper rifle. I have a JG BAR-10 with a mancraft kit SDiK with the mancraft regulator using 12g CO2 powerlets. Its barrel is a EDGI bull barrel with an action army hop-up chamber R-hopped with a soft nub. My SRS has of course the R-hop but with a 420mm 6.02mm ZCI Barrel. In terms of accuracy and range, both at 2.3joules and using the same 0.36g bbs, the performance is very similar.
Silverback posted a video of how to replace the barrel and hop up bucking that you can find on youtube.
Seal
The provided seals are very good. If you put your finger against the barrel and fire with no bb your finger will stop the air from escaping and you get a nice satisfying expulsion of air when you remove your finger.
Bolt handle
The screw holding it on broke after the first day of playing. However, the solution was very simple. The handle is held into place by a steel M4x10 screw. I went on ebay and purchased a blackoxide M4x10 screw which is much stronger than the screw provided. Since then I have had no problems with this aspect of the SRS.
Silverback was kind of enough to let me beta test an update to their product with a welded bolt handle. This greatly enhanced the strength of the bolt assembly. I believe this should be pretty easy to do in the hands of an experienced welder. Otherwise I suggest finding a welding shop near you if you want to get this modification.
![Image]()
![Image]()
Sear Spring
After a few weeks the gun started to fire without the trigger being pulled. Luckily, the sears themselves were just fine but the sear spring definitely needed an upgrade. McMaster-Carr part 9657K63 was a perfect replacement. Cut it to the same length as the stock spring first.
Stock spring on the left, McMaster-Carr spring on the right.
![Image]()
Magazine and reloading
The 30rd magazine is affordable and is very well made. I have had no issues with feeding. It fits very snuggly into your standard 5.56 faco pouch.
![Image]()
Some users have reported having a bit of difficulty in finding an efficient method of changing mags. The following link will provide a video of how I do it.
Gfycat - jiffier gifs through HTML5 Video Conversion. Fast, simple gif hosting without size limits.
Cylinder Volume and Barrel Lengths
Choosing an appropriate barrel length for a given cylinder option is very important. While there isn't an empirical consensus on what the optimum setup is, it is generally agreed that you need long enough barrel to make use of the output of the cylinder, and you need a short enough barrel so that you don't run out of the air pushing your bb out before the bbs at the end of the barrel. Of course, the optimal ratio is also affected by the mass of the bbs and the power of the spring. The range of acceptable cylinder to barrel volume ratios has been inferred to be about 1.5 to 2.5. But many people argue that it is much better to be on the larger end of that ratio than the smaller end.
SecretAznMan's safe bet - Just go for greater than a ratio of 2. From what I've read and experienced overvoluming doesn't hurt, especially if crowned barrels work in the way we think they do.
The cylinder volume of the SRS is about 28mL. The SRS comes with one of three barrel lengths you can choose that are 6.05mm. Here I will list the model, the inner barrel lengths and their volume ratios to the cylinder.
26" - 680mm - 1.4
22" - 578mm - 1.7
16" - 420mm - 2.3
These are just the stock barrels of course. The barrel that comes with the SRS is very middle of the road in terms of quality. But that's probably because almost everyone who's going to put any time and effort into their SRS is going to swap out the inner barrel anyways.
Closing remarks
Thank you for reading, I hope this document provided some new information about the SRS. It's definitely a unique airsoft replica and great for those who want something different yet also skirmishable.
Comments, flames, and questions are all appreciated.
UPDATE 20160102: Cylinder Volume and Barrel Lengths.
UPDATE 20160128: Welded Bolt Handle and Reloading Gyfcat.
Update 20160325: Upgraded Sear Spring
Build quality and aesthetics.
All the metallic parts are CNCed and the quality is exceptional. All receivers have individual serial numbers which are also listed in the manual and on the box. I am personally the proud owner of Silverback SRS #456. The plastic portions of the body are high quality and are on par with the Ares Amoeba nylon fiber bodies. All the important parts like the sears are made from carbon steel, insuring that they will have a much longer life than the stock VSR-10 sears we are familiar with.
Nothing wobbles. I have seen on this forum before that they briefly held the SRS and noticed the barrel wobbles. However, I believe that the barrel was improperly secured. When tightening the barrel in place, on the right side of the SRS there are 4 screws that need to be tightened. I noticed that if one simply tightens one after another, you will have a loose barrel. To solve this, tighten the screws finger tight one after another, then, return to the first and tighten again. You'll notice that the barrel can be finger tightened significantly more. Repeat this process with the rest of the screws until you can no longer finger tighten the screws.
Bolt and Priming
This is one of the unique features of the SRS. While it does allow the SRS to have a very authentic bullpup function there is a detriment in terms of the priming motion. When you pull the bolt back, there is no resistance and this allows the sears to catch onto the back of the piston. Pushing the bolt forward allows the back of the cylinder to compress the spring.
When you first take SRS out of the box, the priming motion is terrible. However, there are two remedies to this. The first thing is to lube the cylinder. The lube provided by silverback is a silicone paste and will significantly improve the ease of priming when copious amounts of it are used. I prefer to use a more viscous silicone oil. You'll notice after a couple hundred shots that the silicone paste turns into a greyish metallic gunk. What I believe is happening is the repeated priming motion scrapes the walls along where the cylinder travels. You'll also see that the cylinder and the cylinder head also gets scraped. This is the second remedy, as you break it in, it'll be easier to prime. Once you clean out all the gunk with some paper towels and such and apply your silicone oil, you'll notice that your SRS is easier to prime. Currently, my bolt travel is so smooth that with the trigger pulled and the bolt handle turned up, the bolt will travel back and forth just by tilting the SRS slightly.
A vertical or angled foregrip may help some get the properly leverage to ease priming.
I also found that replacing the spring with a non-airsoft spring also eased priming. See Spring/Power Upgrades Section
Worn in bolt and body
Spring/Power Upgrades
The SRS uses AEG springs. Silverback posted a video of how to do a spring upgrade on the SRS that you can find on youtube. Out of the box it shot 1.7J. Replacing the spring with what I believe was an m130 brought my power up to 2.3J. Personally I found the spring weight perfectly manageable when priming.
I have stopped using airsoft springs in the SRS. While AEG springs work, they rub against the spring guide/plunger rod making the prime more difficult and possibly decreasing performance. To avoid this I used a spring from McMaster Carr part number 9637k26. This spring has a larger coil diameter than an AEG spring. After cutting this spring to slightly longer than the length of the cylinder and bending the ends inwards, the spring fit perfectly into the cylinder. With this length of spring of spring I measured 2.2J with a significantly easier prime than before. With longer lengths this "k26" spring, I also achieved up to 3 joules of power with of course a much more difficult prime.
Shortened K26 spring with AEG spring
Hop-up and performance
Another unique feature of the SRS is that it does not use a conventional hop up arm. Instead, it has two screws that come in and two different angles to adjust whatever kind of contact you are using with the BB. In theory, this would allow you to correct hop for windage as well as more and less hop. Amazingly, and I had strong doubts about this, it works. In the stock form, SRS provides a pretty standard bucking with a standard hop-up mound. This bucking is nothing special and you'll get the standard range you see with stock hop up nubs albeit with the advantage of being able to adjust for windage.
I'm an R-hop user and I really like my soft nubs. However, to my amazement, the SRS hop-up chamber works perfectly with R-hops. Not only did I have an R-hop for increased range and accuracy, but I was also able to adjust for windage by tweaking just one side of the hop.
Though hop performance is a bit difficult to objectively measure in airsoft, the best comparison I can make is to my other sniper rifle. I have a JG BAR-10 with a mancraft kit SDiK with the mancraft regulator using 12g CO2 powerlets. Its barrel is a EDGI bull barrel with an action army hop-up chamber R-hopped with a soft nub. My SRS has of course the R-hop but with a 420mm 6.02mm ZCI Barrel. In terms of accuracy and range, both at 2.3joules and using the same 0.36g bbs, the performance is very similar.
Silverback posted a video of how to replace the barrel and hop up bucking that you can find on youtube.
Seal
The provided seals are very good. If you put your finger against the barrel and fire with no bb your finger will stop the air from escaping and you get a nice satisfying expulsion of air when you remove your finger.
Bolt handle
The screw holding it on broke after the first day of playing. However, the solution was very simple. The handle is held into place by a steel M4x10 screw. I went on ebay and purchased a blackoxide M4x10 screw which is much stronger than the screw provided. Since then I have had no problems with this aspect of the SRS.
Silverback was kind of enough to let me beta test an update to their product with a welded bolt handle. This greatly enhanced the strength of the bolt assembly. I believe this should be pretty easy to do in the hands of an experienced welder. Otherwise I suggest finding a welding shop near you if you want to get this modification.
Sear Spring
After a few weeks the gun started to fire without the trigger being pulled. Luckily, the sears themselves were just fine but the sear spring definitely needed an upgrade. McMaster-Carr part 9657K63 was a perfect replacement. Cut it to the same length as the stock spring first.
Stock spring on the left, McMaster-Carr spring on the right.
Magazine and reloading
The 30rd magazine is affordable and is very well made. I have had no issues with feeding. It fits very snuggly into your standard 5.56 faco pouch.
Some users have reported having a bit of difficulty in finding an efficient method of changing mags. The following link will provide a video of how I do it.
Gfycat - jiffier gifs through HTML5 Video Conversion. Fast, simple gif hosting without size limits.
Cylinder Volume and Barrel Lengths
Choosing an appropriate barrel length for a given cylinder option is very important. While there isn't an empirical consensus on what the optimum setup is, it is generally agreed that you need long enough barrel to make use of the output of the cylinder, and you need a short enough barrel so that you don't run out of the air pushing your bb out before the bbs at the end of the barrel. Of course, the optimal ratio is also affected by the mass of the bbs and the power of the spring. The range of acceptable cylinder to barrel volume ratios has been inferred to be about 1.5 to 2.5. But many people argue that it is much better to be on the larger end of that ratio than the smaller end.
SecretAznMan's safe bet - Just go for greater than a ratio of 2. From what I've read and experienced overvoluming doesn't hurt, especially if crowned barrels work in the way we think they do.
The cylinder volume of the SRS is about 28mL. The SRS comes with one of three barrel lengths you can choose that are 6.05mm. Here I will list the model, the inner barrel lengths and their volume ratios to the cylinder.
26" - 680mm - 1.4
22" - 578mm - 1.7
16" - 420mm - 2.3
These are just the stock barrels of course. The barrel that comes with the SRS is very middle of the road in terms of quality. But that's probably because almost everyone who's going to put any time and effort into their SRS is going to swap out the inner barrel anyways.
Closing remarks
Thank you for reading, I hope this document provided some new information about the SRS. It's definitely a unique airsoft replica and great for those who want something different yet also skirmishable.
Comments, flames, and questions are all appreciated.
