Worst Paintball Gun Ever Made?

[Brokeass_baller]

I have two. My old SFT Shocker, and a Superbolt Autococker.

The Shocker had a misaligned bore, I think. No matter what I did, I could not get rid of the terrible FSDO. It seriously took 5 shots just to get one normal velocity shot. I rebuilt the reg, bought an HE bolt, spring modded it, bought a Virtue board thinking it would have a better FSDO setting, nada. Nothing could correct it. And I was trying to use it in tournaments. That thing sucked. But, later I picked up an NXT for pretty cheap and that thing was awesome. So, whatever.

Then the Superbolt kept binding when firing. It would recock ok, but every few shots, the gun would bloop out a ball, and sometimes the bolt would seize. Turns out the bores were misaligned. Like, visibly so. I parted out the frame, front block, hammer, and bolt, and just tossed the body into the trash where it belonged.

[Brokeass_baller]

Yes, they were. Or maybe Taiwanese. Whatever.

Nowadays, and I'm shocked to see this, there's a small community on the Facebook cocker pages that just love these damn things. Most turn them into pumps, but a few have managed to make the pneus work. Maybe all of the REALLY bad ones were tossed in the scrap bins years ago, so only the better quality runs still exist? I'm not really sure. I can't even appreciate the Dye bodies anymore because my Superbolt look-alike was so awful.

[Spider!]

I love my superbolt pumps! They do take a lot of work to setup and have random tolerance issues. I keep the body and sear parts; the rest is scrap. I don't think there were different runs, they just varied that much. When they were $65 new, they were worth it.

[Brokeass_baller]

That's about the time that I bought mine. Somewhere under $100. Screw that thing. Terrible gun. I'd rather play with a Talon in a PSP 15 ramping tournament than a casual rec day with that thing.

[Roger7pball]

I’ll probably be banished from some parts of MCB… but the Rainmaker is awful stock from the factory. Heavy trigger pull, slow cycle rate, loud, battery hungry, unreliable, etc.

But I do like polishing turds so after some changes I don’t want to toss it in the lake.

[Jonnydread]

Don't they make jewelry out of fossilized/polished poo?

[lew]

I think even the Rainmakers Owner Group would agree that they are excrement in significant need of polishing.

[Brokeass_baller]

Everything you just said is exactly why people like the Rainmaker. It's crap, but not an inherently bad design. So people like modding and dressing them up all nice to make them perform how they should have from the factory.

Plus it's basically a Vector, or Sterling, which have dedicated cult followings. It's like they need to "save" the electro version of their favorite markers.

[William the Third]

So "worst gun" is hard to say, but the worst one I've worked on recently was a cRAP4 T68 someone brought to the field for me to work on. It's a STBB, a well proven design, how can you mess that up? Well cRAP4 found a way. At least it was functional when I was done with it. Not going to lie, I had to fight strong urges to just chuck it in the lake by my house.

[Seajay]

T68 is probably the actual worst paintball gun ever made. It's not even just a cheap gun that kinda works, it is that terrible.
You can still have fun with some knockoff crap, but the T68 will take all your money, your time, and your day and give you a quick trip back to the car.

[Magageddon]

I think one of the more meme'd markers that had a terrible launch and actually gave the manufacturer a bad reputation was the machine vapor. I think it had a 16 or 1700 dollar price tag and would go down constantly. I knew a guy who had one and used it a lot, but the dude also used a calculated amount of grease/other things that the average owner was incapable of understanding
.

[Chuck E Ducky]

The Vapor was garbage I agree got to be up there in terms of the worst. I remember them offering them up to teams for free back in my PSP days. They were so bad they were basically begging people to shoot them. They offered us a tec at every event and free markers /gear at one point. We still payed PE packages instead.

You was supposed to get a hopper with them but like the pulse copyright infringement shut them down leaving customers holding the bag.

[mikew]

The biggest failures in my mind were the Nelson semi auto conversions that appeared in the early nineties.

Two come to mind that I had personal experience with. The PMI AutoTrracer and the UK Kenimex Scorpion Auto Loader kits.

The promises were big but the delivery was a huge disappointment!

[Chuck E Ducky]

Way before my time. We’re there any that we’re actually decent and functional? Or were they only home brewed options?

[mikew]

I don't recall any that were any good. The AutoTrracer was a flimsy Autococker mechanism that hung off the side of the marker. It worked ok but the Nelson valve couldn't take the hammering of a higher rate of fire and often broke. The Kenimex Auto Loader was an AutoMag style drop in kit that replaced the Nelson valve assembly. It worked ok too but it had no ball detent so was prone to double feeding and ball breaks. I have come across a few home brew versions and they seemed to work ok if a bit ugly. The best one I saw was an auto cocking conversion based on a Sterling pump. Then again the WGP Autococker, Palmer's Hurricane and the Typhoon are all basically pump conversions.

[infamoussmiley]

It could be because of a bad release, the price point/quality, reliability issues, terrible design flaws, horrible tolerances.

I'll start with this thing, I Don't think its the worst, but definitely up there. The Blade, not that cheap brass eagle pump, this semi auto brick with a macroless air through frame that froze your hands during winter play and basically was a ticking time bomb before it beat itself to death and imploded.

Are we talking about the Blade 1 or the Blade 2?

Best,

Smiley

[Chappy]

USI Eliminator. It had a cheap plastic bolt connecting rod that would often break. It also had a .68 cal front bolt. Do you see where I’m going here?

[Grendel]

Well I look at the worst paintball gun differently, for me it is the Smart Parts ION because it ruined recreational play by bringing cheap and reliable high rates of fire with electronics that supported ramping. This one product most likely cost a lot of potential long term players thus adding to the suck for recreational play for many players.

[Timber_Ghost]

Brass eagle blade was the worst gun ever made. 1 or 2 doesn't matter. The. Worst. Ever.

[Ecapnation]

And yet I have three still working today after like 20 years..... But every blazer I ever had worked at best one outing

[The Great Equalizer]

32 Degrees Rebel 02.

I worked at a paintball field that used PMI Piranha's. The bolt was connected to the hammer and spring assembly and could be pulled out together, quickly cleaned, lubed and re-assembled. Each ref/tech could clean dozens of them at the end of the day in an hour.

The boss decides PMI is too expensive and buys a bunch of Rebel 02's instead. Out of the crate 75% leaked air and another 10% had a sear issues. We spent hours swapping parts and replacing factory o-rings to get more of them to work and had to send about 30% back. Of the ones we kept, since the tolerances were so far off, the internals of one would not necessarily work in another body, so repair was a nightmare. They also lacked the captive hammer/bolt system of the Piranha's, so they were much harder to clean. Not learning his lesson, he ordered another batch a year later and we went through the same thing.

[Ecapnation]

Nps blew these out at like $20 each wholesale....a lot of fields bought them for temporary rentals

[Araphel]

I was at a tournament in the early 2000's and the field that was hosting it had a few dozen of these (and a few pt enforcers) thrown in a dumpster. I took a few for milling practice.

[The Great Equalizer]

Ecapnation - Maybe if I were my boss I would think that price differential was worth it. Unfortunately they were also unreliable, leading to unhappy renters. We tried to issue to old fleet of Piranhas as much as possible and only break into the Rebel 02s when we ran out, but then you had kids who wanted the "shiny" gun and I couldn't explain that the old beat up ones were actually better.

Araphel - That's hilarious. I owned an early PT Enforcer and I agree that both models were dumpster-worthy.

[Bow]

The Thumper.

A vast majority of them just don't work or fell apart. The clippard valve is only rated for 250 or so psi... so let's throw a 12 gram changer on it from factory..... it needs to have Vaseline packed into a tiny hole every bag of paint or you'll blow the valve.

First run of hammers were soft, and to remove the hammer you needed to drill a hole in the marker to remove the pin holding it in.

Mine was fantastic, but I needed to be treated like a princess and had custom internals.

If it was more reliable I'd consider getting another one. If there was a Thumper 2 that actually worked I'd probably switch over.

[bellicose]

Mine worked great, except chopping every third ball. Loved the look and operation. Wish the Nova team would make a Nova/Thumper.

[maggot]

Somebody already said it, but definitely the Superbolt. I worked at a field at the time and it seemed like every weekend someone would show up with one (they were $50 online) and had their dreams crushed when we explained they couldn't use it without adding another $100 in parts to it (it needed an HPR, fittings, and an ASA at a bare minimum - in most cases also needed a new LPR and Ram). Even with all that, you'd still working against rollouts, so a barrel kit was on order.

So many kids with high expectations only to get a dose of reality on what chinese knockoff means.

[DocsMachine]

The Dragunfly. An even worse 'Cocker knockoff than the Superbolt.

The Equalizer. Besides the well-known issues with the gun, the first-generations ones would literally fire a full-power shot when you unscrewed the tank. There was a factory recall over that.

There's a ton of STBBs that qualify- I'd argue the original Spyder wasn't all that great, either.

Brass Eagle's Poison. I actually owned one. Very likely the worst semiauto I ever paid my own money for.

Heck, I'll argue that Brass Eagle, in any of it's incarnations, never put out a gun that was more than barely adequate- and I've had a bunch. The Nightmare wasn't all that great, the Cobra no better, any of the Daisy era guns were cheap plastic crap, the Rainmaker was a godawful design, and their later cheap box-store crap wasn't even any good for a quick backyard one-on-one.

Most of Thunderpig's product line. Arguably, everything Thunderpig made.

The Thumper was so badly designed, I'm surprised they even bothered manufacturing it.

Risking a little animosity, I'll argue the Revolution was badly done, too. Actual manufacturing, top notch. Design? Maybe a bit iffy. Base concept? It's basically a "powered pump", and far too complex to justify the nearly-nonexistent difference in performance. Even the hardcore Phantom fanboys passed on that one.

Doc.

[bellicose]

I have a Revolution, and I really want to love it, but it chops like crazy, and even Mike couldn't get it to be consistent velocity.

[The Great Equalizer]

I love BE TigerSharks and begrudgingly respect Stingray I and II's because if they stopped working you could take them apart, do nothing to the disassembled parts, put them back together and they worked again. I'm not a fan of anything else they made and I still have nightmares about those Brass Eagle square jars of paint being the only paint available in my area.

[Spider!]

I came to MCB looking for automag pump parts from Rainman. When I saw the Brass Eagle sub forum I thought "seriously?". I then knew these guys had to be dedicated nuts.