[WhollyBlasphemous]

Hi everyone. This is going to be a little long, so I'll include a TL;DR at the end since it's mostly context anyways.

I have been playing airsoft for a good while now, and I have worked on all my guns extensively myself. The thing is that I haven't actually bought a new gun in about 8 years, so needless to say I haven't exactly kept my finger on the pulse of what the new latest and greatest systems/technologies are.

I currently use an Echo-1 ER25K. I fully rebuilt the AEG system in it since it took normal V2 parts, with the exception of an elongated cylinder head. Once that build started nearing the end of it's life I figured I would move over to HPA which was hyped for consistency and minimal maintenance. I got a Jack and dropped it in in 2018. That whole saga has been nothing but frustration since I had to get a custom nozzle made because of the irregular cylinder head length, and ever since I have been having endless reliability issues. When the gun shoots it is dead on and can lift any BB I have put through it. The problem is that it only shoots every other trigger pull: I have tried shimming the engine, shimming the whole gearbox inside the chassis and I still can't get it to line up properly. I've come to the conclusion that due to the sheer number of times I've rebuilt the gun and the age of the system the tolerances will never be acceptable for a precision platform.

So, armed with that context, I am looking at building a new platform from the ground up. I am willing to put about $1k USD into the build: that includes the base gun and whatever upgrades I would put into it. I just have no idea what platform I should even consider starting with at this point, but I do have a few wants.

Wants:

1. My current setup uses .308 mags, I would like the platform to use that but I'm not opposed to M4 mags
2. I would like to keep it as lightweight as possible. I find that my playstyle involves a lot of moving to get different angles and the inertia of a big metal gun can be fatiguing
3. As few proprietary components as possible. Unless the proprietary nature is superior to standardized components. eg: I'm not opposed to a proprietary piston head if it incorporates something like a tappet plate-less design or provides superior volume, etc.

TL;DR
What platform would be great for a ground-up AEG DMR build? OOTB+Mods =>$1,000USD

TIA

 

[Leo Greer]

You’ve done a good job quantifying your preferences here, but what kind of effective range are you looking to achieve?

For a lightweight DMR, my top recommendation is to start off an Arcturus M4. The modern ones come with half decent neo motors, inline mosfets, and other features that I’ve found incredibly useful on a gun that costs around $200 OOTB. I have a version with a polymer receiver set and aluminum handguard, and it’s quite lightweight, which is why I picked it in the first place. I got tired of running around like nuts with an 8lb gun.

The downsides for your purposes are: uses M4 mags, and has a semiproprietary microswitch trigger. The trigger isn’t an issue by any means, but if you love GATE Titans this might not be the one for ya. I also wouldn’t trust the stock motor on more than M130-M140 unless you’re sticking to 18:1s, but I can hardly call this a downside.

The upsides are: piston is incredibly tough, and really the whole gearbox compression assembly is DMR suitable OOTB, with only a change to full cylinder (depending on the model) needed. Hop unit only needs a few tweaks and mods to be DMR ready. You could potentially keep the inner barrel stock, as it’s high quality palsonite steel.

Things I’d mod or change for a DMR build (on mine):

Full cylinder. $10

New motor (call it a 40K something. I don’t go super high FPS so I don’t need ridiculous torque motors): $30

Maybe new barrel (the stock quality is good enough that I’d jump straight to a Lambda): $30-40

Hop rubber (this is the most important one. The stock rubber is accurate but lacks range OOTB): $7-15

And that’s pretty much it. All the other stabilization, shimming and tuning can be done for free with elbow grease. I make my own nubs, so that’s not on my shopping list.

I’m currently overhauling my NY06 CQB, and I have a build thread running on Airsoftsociety that I’ll link below. I haven’t gotten to the barrel group tuning yet, and I’m probably not going to do the full DMR tuning package, but the potential is there for sure.

So far I’ve covered gearbox internals, externals, and I’ve started working through the build, and I’ll continue to update the thread through the process. We’ve hit a nasty patch of weather where I live, so that’s halted my testing for now.

Arcturus NY06

 

[WhollyBlasphemous]

Hey, thanks for the reply! My field has really dense foliage which makes engagements past ~60 yards really difficult. I mainly need the punch to send .4's through the brush.
My field has a 2.1J limit for DMRs as a hard ceiling, so I'll be building more directly into consistency rather than brute range if that makes sense.

I have experience with the ZCI 22TPA motors and they're great. However I would like to consider upgrading to a brushless in the future, so I'm less concerned about the quality of the inline FET since I'll likely inevitably have to put a Perun or GATE unit in at some point anyways unless the stock unit is capable of pushing a brushless.

I'll definitely look into your build as that sounds really compelling. Again, I'm less concerned about range than I am consistently pushing heavier BBs into the 60 yard range.

 

[Leo Greer]

Actually, my build is brushless. No issues thus far on M120-M130 springs. Perun and GATE are actually less compatible with brushless than ordinary trigger assemblies, since a few of the ETU features will destroy the motor’s built in ESC if used. You can use them together, but it can be dangerous. Perun in particular has little Easter egg tones built into that if activated can harm your ESC (it plays tones by vibrating the motor, and reverse current is what hurts the ESC).

 

[WhollyBlasphemous]

Actually, my build is brushless. No issues thus far on M120-M130 springs. Perun and GATE are actually less compatible with brushless than ordinary trigger assemblies, since a few of the ETU features will destroy the motor’s built in ESC if used. You can use them together, but it can be dangerous. Perun in particular has little Easter egg tones built into that if activated can harm your ESC (it plays tones by vibrating the motor, and reverse current is what hurts the ESC).

Gotcha, I wasn't aware of that. I have an Aster in my DSG build right now and it has a dedicated brushless setting under the active braking settings.

 

[Leo Greer]

That’s a nice little addition—I hope Perun starts building that into their code as well.

 

[Akami]

Uhh, what about the upcoming Silverback MDRX? It's tappetless too and uses the same 308 style mag like SR25 and some even said that it's compatible with other AEG SR25 mags that are already in the market.

 

[WhollyBlasphemous]

Uhh, what about the upcoming Silverback MDRX? It's tappetless too and uses the same 308 style mag like SR25 and some even said that it's compatible with other AEG SR25 mags that are already in the market.

I've had my eye on that one, can't lie it's pretty much exactly what I want, and I've been participating in the ongoing thread for that gun as well.

My main concern with the system right now is just that in-depth reviews are few and far between. A lot of the proprietary nature isn't problematic with me for instance: the gearbox is proprietary, but it still takes V2/3 gears.

What gives me pause, especially looking to upgrade it is that the barrel OD appears to be proprietary, or at the very least TM spec, we're not entirely sure yet. That means that barrel upgrades are an unknown quantity, as well as potential bucking upgrades.

Assuming the initial round of owners end up enjoying the gun and my fears as a modder are assuaged I will definitely be giving this gun a lot of weight