The Classic Matrix c. 2000-2004: A Brief History

[fat-50-]

This is Brian at the Tombstone tournament in Montreal Canada shooting the omega

[BonesJackson]

Ok that's really cool. I will likely reach out to you. I write in bursts as inspiration (or whiskey) strikes. Or both.

[zmannz1984]

I remember playing at pbc greenville the first weekend the matrix was out. Trauma and i think mayhem got a few. Can’t remember if they had halos yet, but the wntire sound of paintball was suddenly different. As soon as they got traction there was a sudden resurgence in the value of larger CI air tanks because they were such gas hogs.

[BonesJackson]

Hmm. Time to resume stream of thought.

Lee Kirwan presented the patent office with his Omega bolt which, originally, was mechanical and utilized a 4 way valve similar to what you'd find on a 'cocker. Mentally replace the solenoid with a mechanical valve. It made a lot of sense at the time. I cannot stress enough how important a single part of the bolt, later known as the "top hat", is. See image below for "Top Hat" and "Front Wall" portions of the bolt that have internally sealing O-rings; I need to stress how this has never been done before. When I researched this gun I reached out to Lee and he indicated the patent office told him this wouldn't work, but he decided to proceed anyway. The thought process was that internal pressure would unseat the O-rings and blow them out and the bolt system would regularly fail. It didn't. So here we have a breakthrough in the paintball world of an entirely pneumatic bolt system with no springs in this revolutionary and really cool design. Most modern spools utilize this design in some form, that is to say internally sealing O-rings. Lee never charged any patent money for his contribution, and remains one of the unsung heroes of the sport. Similarly celebrated people are those like Tom Kaye who introduced Nitrogen and later HPA as propellants or Tippmann's adoption of Schraeder valves for tank disconnection. These were not patented advancements; they were made free to grow the sport or, in Lee's words, "My gift to paintball."

And what a gift. Lee and his business partners wanted to bring this cool design to the world and came in touch with fellow-Canadian Richmond Italia, a known name in the industry behind such brands as Diablo and GI (Gardner Italia) to introduce the next level of high end paintball guns to the world. Now I'm not privy to drama nor am I going to claim I was, in any part, aware of what happened behind closed doors. Here's what I understand:

- Richmond was interested in competing with the Angel which, in the late '90's *was* the competition. Therefore this Omega had to be converted to electropneumatic

- Richmond reached out to multiple people to bring the Omega to the next level. Some people said Jack Wood from PE was involved so I reached out to him years ago via TechPB. To my delight he responded:
"Yes and no. Richmond did bring it to us and we did look at it. At the time he wanted us to take up the reins and develop the gun into a working electropneumatic marker. The one stipulation he had was that we didn't touch the internals. We could not alter them, change them, improve them, modify them, nothing. We got it working as an EP in about 5 minutes and it did work. No problems there. No issues with bounce (it had little kick, very slow bolt speeds and weighed at least 4 pounds!) at all. That was not the problem. The problem was that the original Matrix internals were some of the most complex and confusing set of parts I have ever seen in a paintball marker. We said yes, it could work, but we would never want to do it in its current form. It was too crude, too complex, and unnecessarily so! If we were allowed to refine the internals, we probably would have picked it up and run with it, but Richmond was adamant that we could NOT change anything inside the body. So we said thanks, but no thanks, that's not going to work for us, and we sent the prototype back to him." - Jack Wood

- A small custom Canadian shop called Aardvark Custom Paintball Products submitted themselves for the job, spearheaded by animal-lover Rachel Duncan. Being a sensible person, Rachel realized that having a name that started with AA would put them first alphabetically in the phone book for paintball fields and also Aardvarks are cute as hell. If you're not aware, the word Aard-vark is Dutch and translates roughly to Earth Pig. *snort snort*

Rachel took an Omega prototype home, aired it up, and the bolt parts exploded everywhere. She reassembled them and went to work installing a solenoid on a manifold and circuit board on a microswitch to make the gun electropneumatic. Rachel also had reservations about the original bolt design but went along with Richmond's wishes and sold the Diablo E-Matrix.
Gonna be honest I forget how Airtech works into this but they predated Diablo ever-so-slightly and had a very small run.
Rachel indicated there were multiple machine shops manufacturing original Matrix bodies which is why the serial numbers are all over the place. The ones I've encountered have serials stamped on the front below the LPR (which is what Aardvark custom guns used), stamped serials inside the battery/solenoid chamber, hand-scratched numbers in the battery/solenoid chambers, serials stamped on the rear back plate below the battery, and then no serials at all. We'll get there.

[AaronM]

Thank you I’ve been looking for this

[BonesJackson]

Maybe I'm better off breaking this down into people and their contributions instead of trying to timeline things. Since I'm on a Lee Kirwan kick let me just put everything out there I know of him into the next section. I've already covered a fair bit of how he fundamentally designed and is responsible for the majority of this gun. Let's cover post-Richmond Italia.

After licensing the Omega, later renamed to the Matrix, to Richmond, Lee formed a new company with his buddy, Roger Hurst. LeeRtech was a combination of names (Lee Roger Tech --> LeeR) and they set about making some improvements to the bolt kit. There were a couple different things they offered. One was the V2 bolt kit which was a 2 piece kit replacing the spacer and rear wall. It channeled the airflow into a conical entrance for the bolt and audibly changed the way the gun sounded. Having personally used it I will offer that it made the gun make a "bloop?" sound. That's the best way I can describe it. Does it make an efficiency difference? I don't know I never tested that.

leethal-mod.jpg


The v3 bolt kit only ever made it to the prototyping stage so I only saw pictures of it. I can't say exactly what it was intended to do. Digging around to see if I have the photo squirreled away on my hard drive. Will update if I find it.

LeeRtech also offered an upgraded back cap with a series of air holes bored in like a clock face around the interior perimeter. Nearly identical rear caps can be found offered by Freeflow indicating LeeRtech and Freeflow were possibly working together but I could never get an interview with Ethan from Freeflow so I'm speculating.

Lee Kirwan Trivia:

• He could be mistaken for Steve Perry from Journey (it's the hair)
• After his exit from paintball he worked at a Toyota plant in Canada where they made.... the Toyota Matrix. Total coincidence.
• "When Diablo took over they sent me a gun as a thank you. When Gen-E took over they sent me a gun as a thank you. When DYE took over they sent me a cease and desist letter."