Lost Guns

Airstar. Airstar introduced their innovative Nova line of markers in the late 1990's. Using 'spool' valve technology derived from industrial applications their new marker was touted as being much less susceptable to break down than conventional semi-autos. By all reports this is true. The Nova and it's follow up, the Super Nova were touted as being quite accurate and very reliable. Trouble arose when a manufacturing defect appeared in Super Nova regulators. An issue that could have resulted in severe injury to operators. Airstar reacted quickly and handled the situation well but a shadow hung over the new design. The killing blow came for Airstar later when one of their shareholders began missappriating funds. Airstar filed for bankruptcy and left it's Nova line orphaned. The Airstar case is still in court. This is pretty tragic really as the Nova was a truly innovative design that was gaining a reputation for incredible accuracy. It's primary drawback had been its appearance which had been described by many as being that of a 'Giant Space Dildo'. The Nova's were not sleek by anyone's standard, but they performed well. The lead designer from Airstar has developed a new electo-pneumatic marker called first the Chaos and Later the Mayhem. This gun definately shows the Nova lines but doesn't have the barrel shroud that gave the Nova it's awkward appearance. Time will tell wether Airstar arrises from the ashes and if the new Mayhem will be a success.

Line SI Line SI dominated the early paintball gun market. Jerry Dobbins, now head of Indian Creek Designs engineered their top notch quality Bushmaster line of pump-guns. A couple of bad designs during the critical stages of transition from pump to semi-auto put Line SI into trouble and the company folded, leaving behind a great legacy that includes the following markers.

Bushmaster The dominant pump-gun of the early days of tournament paintball. If you wanted to win, you carried a Bushmaster. Weld-less construction prevented heat distortion of the breech. Precise and heavily constructed. Easy to maintain and startling accuracy with big bore paint. These markers could shoot Nelson's original big, hard, and round paintballs with amazing accuracy. The Deluxe model featured a detachable barrel. A lightning fast lever-action drop out quick changer was a desireable option if you didn't opt for constant air.

Promaster Fatal flop number two. This one was the Coup de gras. The Promaster was a genuine semi-auto but plagued with problems. It used a closed bolt which would have been great with one exception. Timing was not well controlled. Ball chops were frequent. And, if a segment of the shell got in between the bolt and the barrel wall, as they almost always did, the bolt would jam up so tight it took a hammer to get it open again. I owned one for exactly one day's play. Sent it back. You still see used Promaster's for sale from time to time.

Air Power Air Power company built top notch products to serve as military trainers. Quality construction was an Air Power hallmark. You will not find today any marker as lovingly engineered and constructed as the Air Power markers were. But quality has it's price, and Air Power markers were much higher priced than competitive products. Sales of the Apex Elite to the military buoyed the company for several years but may have hurt them in the long run. Air Power sold out name, number, and machinery around 1995. Call them up and ask about your Vector and you will receive a blank look. Coincedentally, a man named Mike Power served as their tech support operator. A friendly, knowlegable person, Mike Power became a cult figure. Because of his name, he was assumed to be the designer and owner of AirPower. This however is a fluke, he was simply their tech support person and not a company head. The Vector was designed by a retired Navy Machinist named Greg Koteski, who, by all reports was obsessed with the sniper concept. Hence, his design was focused on extreme accuracy. This info may be little more than 'urban legend' however. Almost nothing more is known of Mr. Koteski and it is not known if he is still employed by Air Power.

Apex Elite Air Power's flagship pump-gun. Likely the most accurate ever made. It was the first to feature a Venturi-Bolt which was claimed to give it a longer range and flatter trajectory. More likely it was the extremely tight tolerances to which the marker was built that lead to it's high performance. Much of the hype today about Venturi bolts stems from the success of the Apex so long ago. The military adopted the Apex as a trainer due to it's quality construction. This made the Apex a bit hard to obtain for a while at the peak of its popularity. A fact that in the long run may have hurt Air Power. New overstock Apex's are still available but the price rivals that of a new semi-auto.

Vector One must handle the Vector to appreciate it. Nothing else is built so well. The fit of the panels that make up it's chassis are so precise that the seams are nearly invisible. Accuracy of the marker is phenomenal. But two glaring problems plagued it. The barrel was built into the receiver making after market barrels impracticle. The second problem was the handgrip which looked like it was added as an afterthought. Some of the early Vectors had leakage problems that required factory repairs. This teething trouble gave them a bad reputation early on. Cost of a new Vector was high so few sold. They can still be bought 'new' overstock for as little as $100. The Vector is not entirely extinct, it's design lives on in the Rainmaker.

Viper Pump-gun The Viper pump-gun was the Ferrari F-40 of the early days of the sport. Expensive and outfitted with every available feature. Constructed of thin-walled stainless steel and featuring a quick change, drop-out CO2. Delrin pump and Nylon bolt. Long on features but short on details, the Viper was definitely a pro shop gun. It has a very 'home built' look to it. Many of it's components are extremely crude. This was common for the hand built markers of the early days. Today's custom shops take too much pride in their work to sell something as 'unfinished' as the Viper was. Still, the Viper was a high performance marker for it's day. The letters RTP stamped into the side of the brass sight rail stand for 'Rick The Prick" I don't have the whole story on that one. I have been told, and have heard stories confirming that 'Rick' isn't really 'A Prick' One player in Tinker's Guild who had never heard of the Viper pump said that a nice guy at the field let him borrow a Viper when his gun quit, later, when asked where the gun came from the owner replied 'I used to make them in the 1980's' Produced only in limited numbers, the Viper is one of the rarest 'production' paintball guns.

Brass Eagle Brass Eagle is by no means defunct. But Brass Eagle is not the same company it used to be. Originally a small Canadian operation they were, I believe, the first company to produce a marker specifically for paintball. During their history as a Canadian company Brass Eagle produced a number of markers that would later go completely out of production. Brass Eagle was bought out by Daisy in 1995 and became Daisy's paintball division. Brass Eagle currently mass-markets entry level paintball guns and gear. They use pretty much anything but brass to make their current line-up.

Nightmare 68 The original Brass Eagle Nightmares. Back when their paintguns really were brass. I recall seeing ads for the Nightmare 68 in issues of The American Rifleman not long after I bought my first Splatmaster. Oh how I wanted one. This was around '84 or '85. I guess it was the first purpose built paintball gun, the Nel-spot and the first Sheridan's having been built for forestry. Problems with seals plagued the early production models. I would nearly kill to get my hands on an unmodified brass Nightmare 68. Quite possibly it is the rarest production paintgun of all now.

Later Nightmares Brass Eagle continued the Nightmare name into a second generation of pump-guns. The later Nightmares were much bulkier but made of lightweight aluminum. Like their predecessor, they had some early problems with seals. There were two models, the standard and the LB, Long Barrel. Two of the guys I played with all that time back had LB models. I remember the very distinct sound they made when firing. The hammer was loud and it made a strange double pop. I always knew when the ball that flew out of the bush at me had been launched by Shawn or Cliff. If memory serves both guys had a lot of trouble out of their LB's. Both later had direct feeds installed, then later still traded them back to B.E. for Cobras.

Cobra/King Cobra The Third Generation of Brass Eagle pump-gun. The Cobra had nelson style lines and a wrap around pump. The earlier Nightmares had sheridan style belly pumps. I think I managed to play one last game with Cliff and Shawn after they got their Cobra's so I don't recall much about their performance. I do seem to remember them missing a few later games because their Cobra's were broken. Maybe it was just because they were hard on their equipment. I don't know. The arrival of the double actions and true semi-auto's was the death knell of the Cobra's.

Eagle/Golden Eagle Brass Eagles addition to the worthless assemblage of double action semi-auto's. If you don't know what the term double action means, let me define. A double action trigger means that by pulling the trigger you are doing two things at once. First, you are cocking the gun, second, you are firing it. Double action paintguns had horrible, long, stiff triggers and finicky, fragile mechanisms. Not a single example of the type worked worth spitting on. The Eagle and Golden Eagle were not exceptions to this. Due to the double action mechanism the Eagle and Golden Eagle were LOOOOONG but had extremely short barrels. Maybe 8-10 inches. They were unwieldy and unreliable.

Model 85 (Mod-85) The model 85 was a unique paintball gun in several regards. First, it did not use CO2 as a propellant but rather shotgun primers. The shotgun primers were held in the base of a plastic shell casing cartridge that also held the paintball. I believe that they were .40 caliber. The design was very similiar to the Mac-10 sub-machine gun and was likely intended as a military trainer. The Mod-85 fired semi or full auto. Ammo was loaded from clips. Due to difficulty with velocity regulation and the general problem of collecting the empty shell cases after a game the Mod-85 fell by the wayside. They are now a much sought after peice, typically fetching $200+ at auction.

National Survival Game 'NSG' The company founded by the founders of the sport eventually foundered. But in the early days NSG WAS the sport. Originally they sold rights to territories and field set-ups. Later they began to produce their own line of entry level markers. Many of the old timers cut their teeth on an NSG marker. Eventually the sport grew beyond NSG's ability to control, NSG's influence waned, and the company faded from view. Charles Gaines and Dan Gurnsey founded NSG.

Splatmaster NSG's first product. And the first paintgun built specifically for paintball. The Splatmaster was a low cost alternative to the Nel-spot. A stock class marker in every regard. It had a horizontal ammo tube and cocked from the rear. The 'design' itself had some merits, but the execution of it's construction left a bit to be desired. Accuracy was abysmal due to it's free floating, sliding barrel. It frequently broke paint. Unless you cut down the CO2 plug you could count on it stripping out soon. Unfortunately, once cut you could count on changing a CO2 cartridge to take a while. One had to be extremely careful not to cross thread the plug when reinstalling. This took nerves of steel when someone was trying to shoot you. Over tighten the CO2 cartridge and you would blow the seal and dump all pressure. I could go on, suffice it to say, changing a 12 gram in a Splatmaster while in the field would give you gray hair. Still, when everyone was using one, they were a lot of fun. We developed quite a series of hop-ups to cure problems and improve performance. Someday I may get bored and write them all into an article. Despite the rear cocking, an experienced shooter could pump out just about the same rate of fire as a conventional pump-gun. There was also a 'splatmaster' in .555 caliber called the 'Gurnsey Mega-BB gun' I nearly bought one for $15 once, wish I had now. It was just like the Splatmaster except it was black with a silver stripe. Intended for plinking, not paintball. It probably would have shot .50 or maybe .60 cal paintballs. I bet these babies are extremely rare. Splatmaster's themselves are not uncommon at all, usually fetching about $30 on E-bay.

Rapide The double action replacement for the Splatmaster. Featured a fixed brass barrel and an odd-ball turret style, vertical stick loader. Fortunately it was easily converted to a direct fed-box. The turreted stick was nearing obsolescence by the time the Rapide reached the market. Like all double actions, the trigger was long and stiff. Unfortunately for the Rapide it hit the market after the first of the high performance pumps and it's own operation wasn't slick enough to make it very competitive with them. While not quite 'rare' Rapides are becoming quite scarce.

McMurry And Son's - Mac-1 Mac-1 Did custom work on paintball guns during the early days of the sport. They created the now legendary Annihilator. Don't know the full story, but Mac-1 Airgun Designs doesn't deal with paintball anymore. Mac-1 now deals with airguns,- pellet guns to the uncouth. While I suspect that they would, could, and do still occasionally repair paintball guns, they are no longer a custom shop for the sport. They have a web site and e-mail contact address but I will not post these to spare Tim McMurry the aggravation of having to deal with messages from paintball players.

The Annihilator The ultimate Sheridan-based pump-gun during the early days. Later eclipsed by Glenn Palmer's guns and eventually booted by the semi-auto. The Annihilator featured a lengthened barrel and a number of other custom features. During that time 'Long' was the thing for paintgun barrels. After market makers even produced slip on barrel extensions for paintball guns. (They were a great way to break more paint) And the Annihilator came with the longest barrel you could buy without having something custom built. About this same time one could see Dave Youngblood on the cover of APG carrying a polished chrome Annihilator with a barrel that had to be three foot long. I seem to recall that barrel being topped with a chromed silencer that must have been eighteen inches long as well. Man were we a bit silly then or what?

Avenger The little brother of the Annihilator. Standard barrel length and much cheaper because of it. Same basic features. Trademark sight notch in the direct feed, which is now ubiquitous. It was great then because it allowed you to see the ball drop into the breech if you were looking down the sights when you pumped the old beast. Reassuring to know you weren't going to dry fire. When you'd just spent fifteen minutes maneuvering into position for a back-shot, dry firing really sucked.

The Boss Smart Parts introduced around 1988 a rather interesting pump-gun, called 'The Boss'. It was nelson based internally but had a belly pump like the sheridan markers. Heavily constructed, it was a solid and well built marker. However, few sold and Smart Parts discontinued the type by 1990. Few have even heard of the Boss and I know of only two of the type in existance. A picture of one is in Action Sports Paintball's museum. See the link in my retailers section.

The Destroyer. One of the most famous of the 'Never Was' guns. Ads for this marker appeared in Action Pursuit Games magazine during the late 1980's. I believe those ads ran for about 5 consecutive months. The Destroyer was a full auto marker that was drum fed. To the best of my knowlege, not a single one of them ever hit the market. I do not know the whole story, wether the Destroyer was a complete hoax or if they just ran into insurmountable issues and abandonned the project. I have heard that they accepted up front orders and then cut and ran with the cash which would suggest a hoax from the start. I have not been able to verify this. Thanks to Slane I now have an image of the ad. Destroyer Ad