Quote:
Originally Posted by silent_lemon
(Post 1835970)
what about western arms, why hasnt this been suggested? or am i missing something after being gone a while?
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Western Arms has fallen out of popularity for a number of reasons:
1) Although they are the nicest feeling guns out of the box, they come with a very significant price increase over the next best competitor: Tokyo Marui.
2) Despite the huge price increase, their durability is, at best, is worse than WE or KJW pistols when used with propane due to the fact that they are designed for lower powered duster gas. Their number one failure point is the slide. Airsoft Innovations at one point, made a flow restrictor valve to reduce the gas power put to the slide, which allowed users to use propane. With this combination, you would have an amazing feeling pistol, with HUGE blowback power. Western Arms blowback is still one of the best in the industry, fresh out of the box.
3) Their hop up system sucks. Period. It's like a KJW/KWA system with the ball bearing on the top... but worse... because there's also a point on the BOTTOM, created by a screw that applied pressure to the top hop nub. I understand the theory behind the design, but it creates a very inaccurate shot. If the round was seated off to one side, then it would fly off to the opposite side upon leaving the muzzle. Groupings were crap, at best. Many enthusiasts shoe horned Tokyo Marui's superior hop up system in to Western Arms. It seemed to work fine for CQB, so if the user had no intention on using these guns for <40 foot engagements (as is typical with competitive shooters), then the crap groupings didn't matter too much, as hop up could be turned off completely to avoid these grouping issues.
4) Their positive pressure valve system sucks. Period. It starts the blowback cycle the moment the BB has left its position in the chamber. This is bad, because the power of the slide blowing back will throw the shot off before it's even left the muzzle. This is NOT how a real gun functions, and Tokyo Marui is much better at replicating the firing action of a real gun, using a negative pressure valve system. The negative pressure system allows the projectile to fully leave the barrel, before the slide cycle begins. Just like a real gun.
5) Extremely EXPENSIVE magazines and parts.... assuming you could even find them.
6) That leads to the final issue, of the inability to find parts for them these days. Because of all the above issues, Western Arms aftermarket support (or even OEM support, for that matter), fell to the wayside in favour of all the many more positive attributes of Tokyo Marui platforms.
That isn't to say that Western Arms doesn't have any aftermarket support... if anything, they have the deepest support with ultra high end custom parts manufacturers, since the Western Arms platform did have many positive attributes that Tokyo Marui can't come close to. Primarily, their barrel linkage system in their 1911/Hi-Cap series, as well as their hard kicking blowback system. But again, that leads back to point #6, which is EXTREMELY expensive parts... and people say ILLusion Kinetics parts for the Marui system was expensive... you should see how much our Western Arms parts are. It would make you faint.
But yeah... beautifully built guns out of the box. Great heft, and despite being made of plastic, their slides had a great heft to them. Too bad they were so brittle, which was the major source of their problems.
