The World's Greatest Paintball Comic!

[DocsMachine]

... I may be lying slightly.

Over on one of the webcomics boards, a reader found and linked to this: The First Action-Packed Issue of The Paintball Equalizer!

I had never even heard of this- though I remember seeing that Equalizer ad- and I have to admit my eyes glazed over rather badly and I only skimmed it. It's one of those "almost so bad it's good" things.

Give it a look, if you can.

Doc.

[iamthelazerviking]

Holy cow 😆😆😆

[Trbo323]

Yeah I read about 5 pages and started wondering if the kind of mushrooms/acid combo the Creator was on was still around or if it was lost to time because anyone who made it went mad before passing on the recipe

Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[StaticShocked]

What a way to advertise a paintball marker. That kind of hurt to read.

I am going to go read the whiteboard, now. 😉I have like 20 years go catch up on...

[Trbo323]

Lol, DocsMachine maybe you need a drug trip strip or two in honor of this find

Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[DocsMachine]

Well, given the crew, we're already halfway to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

You've never heard of the Equalizer?

Picture a backbottle Automag with a plastic grip frame that can't mount a bottomline, tank or foregrip, and a trigger pull only slightly shorter and softer than an Arrow staplegun.

It actually had a promising design, developed by the same guy that invented the RG-1 regulator and the Phoenix. But the suits at Sheridan were deathly afraid of AGD suing them over the rough design and vaguely similar vertical on-off valve, so they developed a horizontal trigger valve and a somewhat convoluted air path to feed it.

That and the superheavy spring on the trigger limited the ROF, even with superhuman effort, to maybe 4 BPS on a good day.

Couple that with an inherently backbottle-only design, the fact you couldn't bolt any accessory of any kind to it (no drops, rails, ASAs, foregrips, etc.) and it really didn't appeal to all that many players.

Sheridan sold a bunch before the word got out on them (Sheridan had a solid rep at the time thanks to PGPs and VM-68s) but these days you can pick one up in low-mileage condition for maybe $40. The tricky bit is a small rectangular seal that goes between the body and the grip frame- these are unique to the gun and Sheridan ran out of them 20 years ago.

I make a few on occasion, but generally speaking, nobody really uses them much even just out of nostalgia.

Doc.

[Trbo323]

So basically, to make up for the crap design they decided to do......a comic......

Doc, what are you trying to sell then?

Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[MAr]

Jesus I saw the title and assumed this was about me!

[gabe]

You've never heard of the Equalizer?

Picture a backbottle Automag with a plastic grip frame that can't mount a bottomline, tank or foregrip, and a trigger pull only slightly shorter and softer than an Arrow staplegun.

It actually had a promising design, developed by the same guy that invented the RG-1 regulator and the Phoenix. But the suits at Sheridan were deathly afraid of AGD suing them over the rough design and vaguely similar vertical on-off valve, so they developed a horizontal trigger valve and a somewhat convoluted air path to feed it.

That and the superheavy spring on the trigger limited the ROF, even with superhuman effort, to maybe 4 BPS on a good day.

Couple that with an inherently backbottle-only design, the fact you couldn't bolt any accessory of any kind to it (no drops, rails, ASAs, foregrips, etc.) and it really didn't appeal to all that many players.

Sheridan sold a bunch before the word got out on them (Sheridan had a solid rep at the time thanks to PGPs and VM-68s) but these days you can pick one up in low-mileage condition for maybe $40. The tricky bit is a small rectangular seal that goes between the body and the grip frame- these are unique to the gun and Sheridan ran out of them 20 years ago.

I make a few on occasion, but generally speaking, nobody really uses them much even just out of nostalgia.

Doc.

I had one and actually got it running with the help of a RG-1 between the back bottle and tank as the built in reg had crapped out. Ran for the duration of one game before blowing the trigger valve seal.

Really fun little gun to play with. It is a shame the design is so inherently unreliable and hard to keep running.

[DocsMachine]

Yep. it had a good deal of potential, but as I said, the bosses at Sheridan were so scared of an AGD suit, they crippled it. I heard that directly from the guy that originally designed it. I even have a low-res screencap of the original vertical-valve CAD he sent me. I've always wanted to reverse-engineer one and try it, although that means making a whole new grip frame and maybe outer body, too...

Doc.

[The Inflicted]

I had one and actually got it running with the help of a RG-1 between the back bottle and tank as the built in reg had crapped out. Ran for the duration of one game before blowing the trigger valve seal.

Really fun little gun to play with. It is a shame the design is so inherently unreliable and hard to keep running.

I had some luck wrapping the seal in 2 layers of teflon tape to get it to seal properly.
Never played a game with mine though- just got two working and re-sold them as quickly as I could.