Paintball Gun Upgrades

One of the best first investments in your new paintball gun is an aftermarket barrel. You have a wide selection of companies offering upgrades such as Dye, Smart Parts, Custom Products, Evil, and J&J just to name a few.

What size barrel you should buy depends mainly on what style of paintball you play most. If you play x-ball, hyperball, or speedball then you might want to invest in a shorter barrel. It's easier to maneuver the gun and noise isn't a factor.

If your paintball tastes are more woodsball or scenario type play then you should probably invest in a longer barrel. The length doesn't necessarily affect accuracy, but it does affect how quiet your barrel is and it just looks cool too.

The next logical step in upgrading your paintball gun is to buy a nitrogen tank if it did not already come with one. Nitrogen is far better than CO2 because it is more consistent in pressure and therefore accuracy. Nitrogen will also allow you to play in colder temperatures because it won't freeze up like CO2 tends to do.

Your next step in upgrading your marker is buying an expansion chamber or low pressure chamber. The conversion of liquid CO2 to gaseous CO2 is what is known as an endothermic reaction. This means that it absorbs heat from the surrounding area and cools the gun considerably.

Rapid firing on CO2 will quickly make the gun extremely cold and this will slow down the conversion of the CO2 from liquid to a gaseous state. This will result in very inconsistent accruacy. An expansion chamber increases the volume of space that the liquid CO2 has to expand into. This in turn, will increase the area from which it can pull heat, thus increasing consistency during rapid firing.

Another point to note is that when the outdoor temperature is cooler, an expansion chamber will help your gun shoot more consistently for the very same reasons. 50 degrees Fahrenheit is considered the point where most guns will start to lose efficiency, regardless of the expansion chamber.

The next step can be open to dispute. Some paintballers would recommend an anti-chop bolt while others hate them due to the potential of jamming the gun.
An anti-chop bolt basically will not allow the bold to crush a paintball if it doesn't load correctly. This will usually result in a jam that needs to be cleared.

Some paintballers would recommend getting a marker that has "eyes" which is a laser that looks across the breach and simply won't allow the bolt to close until the ball is all the way in.

Your call depending on what works for you and your budget.

Another way to upgrade your gun is to buy an electric hopper. An electronic hopper will eliminate the need to be shaken during the game. This will significantly increase your rate of fire.

Your average gravity fed hopper can typically only feed approximately 5 balls or less per second. Most paintballers can easily pull the trigger more than 5 times per second so you're either going to have a paint break issue or you're going to be firing "blanks."

Most would agree that an electric hopper is a great upgrade to have if you have the coin to spend.