What Was Your First Gun, and How Excited Were You?
I know how excited
I was. Ecstatic! Over the Moon. In love and not holding back.
MY first paintball gun was a
PGP. I'd been after Paul Fogal for months to tell me where I could buy one.
At the time, Skirmish USA (my first field), only rented playing equipment, and I learned early on to be first off the bus to the fields so I could find and pick a good rental. (After that was finding a pair of goggles that weren't too scratched up. Make no mistake, Skirmish staff kept their gear in good condition, but rental players show a distinct lack of respect for the gear they borrow and no exceptions were made at Skirmish.)
Paul finally relented and ordered one for me. Some days of intolerable waiting ensued, after which I received my gun at the field - valve removal tool and all. (Old timers will get that.)
Prior to the following weekend of play, I hit up an Army Navy store and picked up a belt and holster for it, and that very next weekend I went strutting through the parking lot at Pocono White Water Rafting and Skirmish USA - The Friendly War Game, the only player (other than Paul) who had their own paintball gun.
And I do mean
Strut. I parked at the very end of the parking lot and walked its entire length, In Tiger Stripe cammos, "army boots", Boonie Hat and that gun strapped to my hip. I turned heads the entire walk. I'm afraid I might have scared off some customers who suddenly decided that their weekend would be better spent playing Mahjong or knitting doilies.
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I fondled that thing. I slept with it, even if I didn't name it Betty. I took it apart as much as possible (valves were sealed with a lead seal - yes, lead seal - and I was cautioned that it was both hard to obtain and difficult to replace - but I did discover that Sheridan valves were sourced from the plumbing department) and I practiced with it day and night - pull the pump back, tilt, push the pump forward, tilt back, pull the trigger.
Later, I would acquire a PMI aftermarket stick feed adapter for it, and modified a wine cork (cutting and sanding) to stick right ahead of the breech to angle balls in.
Not too long thereafter, the arms race in paintball really got started. The recommended gun of choice (for Benjamin Sheridan aficionados) was the McMurray & Sons customized PGP - the Annihilator. Longer barrel, smoother pump action, came equipped with a quick changer (for 12-grams - that's another story). I had Dave Artler of Paintball Depot fame build me an extended pump rod and I added the PMI auto-trigger mod (hold the trigger back and just pump). It was amazingly accurate and earned me the nickname "Demolition Davidson" after a referee watched me "annihilate" something like 12 players in a row. I loved that gun too.
THEN everybody started talking about Bushmasters. Nelson-based guns. (No, gun rivalry did not start with 'Cockers and 'Mags, it started with Sheridan vs Nelson rivalry; people who used Sheridan-based guns were Good. People who used Nelson-based guns were Bad. Very, VERY bad.
On the other hand - Navarone was tearing up the countryside and singing the praises of the Line SI Bushmaster, and there was no denying that it was easier to modify a Bushie on the field (to up your velocity) than it was any Sheridan product. Also a heck of a lot easier to "supercharge" it since everything was "in-line" as opposed to Sheridan's stacked design.
Easier to auto-trigger too, and nearly everyone in the biz was making aftermarket stuff for it.
I wasn't too happy with my Bushmaster. It was an original "Sigma" gun, original version, but no matter what I did, the screw holding my barrel in place would not remain tight and I got quite sick and tired of shooting my barrel off during critical moments in a game. I sold that Bushmaster. I probably wouldn't have if Ken Kelsch had introduced me to "Vibratite" a bit earlier.
I researched and ended up with a
TASO Vindicator. A Bushmaster clone (which were all supposed to be awful, but this gun put that Bushie to shame - screw in barrel, (honed and just the right diameter for balls back then); I added a detachable pump (Savage Arms), modified springs ("balancing" bolt and valve springs was a BIG DEAL back then. So where shims in the valve chamber - I remember thinking that color-coded spring kits were the bomb!).
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Then, we got really serious about our guns. Customized for tournament ball was becoming a thing, new companies entering the market and we learned that all of the top teams, nearly without exception, were replacing the internals of their Nelson-based guns with upgraded components from someplace called "LAPCO". Fortuitously, Kelsch reviewed something called a Grey Ghost from the same company soon thereafter, and since he often used review product when playing with my team, we had a chance to check one out.
Hey. What can I say. When it comes to paintball guns, I'm serially monogamous. The REALLY cool thing about the Ghost was that it was a "breech drop" Nelson design, instead of a "bore drop" (like Bushmasters, Vindicators, etc), which meant - IF they had solved the ball-pinching issue with a breech drop gun, your pump stroke was nearly three quarters of an inch shorter - which meant higher rates of fire.
Guess what? Colin Thompson, the revered gunsmith of the LA Paintgun Company, had solved that problem. He'd also revolutionized valve tubes and hammers and made a highly refined product. We were hooked. Especially after we discovered that we could fire (on auto-trigger) something between 7 and 9 rounds per second, with really good accuracy. Our guns, paired with Nelson paintballs had equals on the field, but nothing was better.
***
Thus concludes my era of pump gun use. Next time - the advent of the semi-auto. I'll give you a hint about what's to come. We spent more than an entire season using our pump gun Ghosts against semi-autos and NEVER felt out-classed.
Note: Gun images are from various places around the web, not images of the actual ones I own.
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