CA have improved in the past couple years (since you bought that CA M16A4 off of me John) and are now even better than before. They did have problems with loose hopups and brittle pistons but those have since been fixed. People have run tens of thousands of rounds through CA guns now a days without any problems.

My top recommendation for armalites, G36's, and MP5's are CA (proline, stay away from sportline) but their M14's are horrible. That recommendation is based on a price per performance ratio. If you can afford it a G&P will last longer, be higher quality, and be more pretty.

are there places where i could get a G&P though? i know i still need to get AV'd but im just wondering if there's hope

G&P come up on ASC and there are usually 2-3 floating around at any given time between the normal personal classifieds and the AV'ed retailer section. They are almost always armalites since that is what G&P is most famous for but you might not really have the option of ordering the exact gun you want. I believe I saw a G&P M16A4 with RIS front end in the AV'ed retailer section on ASC but I am not 100% sure if its still there. Recently I have seen a couple CQBR's pop up in the normal personal classifieds, one of which was brand new in box and the guy just didn't want it after receiving it.

Best bet is to put the money aside you are going to be spending on it ($600-800 usually) and wait for something to pop up and check ASC every day or two (G&P guns don't usually sell very quickly due to the price.) If you are going to play before then you can buy something cheaper (like say a JG or ECHO1) and wait till you can find the G&P close to what you want (could take a couple months of waiting.)

With armalites it doesn't hurt to have a backup gun though since ver.2 mechbox can crack without warning during games. I have seen a brand new SystemA ver.2 mechbox shell crack after less than 100rnds in a 380fps setup. I have also seen them last tens of thousands of rounds with 500fps setups; its a crap shoot as to any structural flaws and the like.

found this browsing wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_air...ufacturers

thought it might be interesting to some

Durak Wrote:found this browsing wikipedia

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airsoft_manufacturers">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ai ... ufacturers</a><!-- m -->

thought it might be interesting to some

That's a really good find Durak; gave it a quick read through and it seems to be pretty well informed. Definitely a good read for new players.

There are several references to the "October 09 crackdown" which if you don't know is when the Chinese government cracked down on airsoft clone companies on the mainland that where making clones of copyrighted airsoft guns without licenses. A lot of people saw it as the "end of airsoft" around the world since initial rumours stated that it was also cracking down in Hong Kong but it turned out it was only mainland China.

ok I have a question, is Cyma and Cybergun the same? it is rather confusing. and if not, what is the general opionion on cybergun. I am in the process of buying a Cybergun Sig 556, and I love the gun. I just wanted your thoughts.

If you can find a used TM Sig 556 on asc i suggest you do that.. never heard of cybergun and dont plan on looking into it either.

Cybergun is a company out of france, havent heard anything good or bad about them, try looking up a few reviews on google.

CYMA is a clone company out of China, again havent heard anything good or bad. I do know that Echo1 rebrands some of their products.

Cybergun is a importer who rebrands everything they import under their own name. They have importing operations in the US and Europe and they all do the same thing; import cheap Chinese guns from various manufacturers and rebrand them all as "cybergun." I had an ICS receiver once that had the cybergun name engraved in it totally different than the ICS engravings. They also own a company called Palco Sports I believe who are known for having a 1/3 chance of guns not working out of the box.

CYMA used to be crap (read: plastic mechbox shells), then they got decent, then they got pretty good, and from what I have read are out of business. Many of their guns come out of the box hot (over 400fps) and they aren't exactly known for reliability. Some people run stock CYMA guns for tens of thousands of rounds with no issue, my AKS-74U snapped an axle on a gear after less than 500rnds. Last I heard CYMA where totally shut down after the clone gun raids in mainland China that also took a major chunk out of Jing Gong and shut down many other cheap manufacturers. You can still find a lot of their stuff NIB since they had warehouses full of stock all over the world that the Chinese government didn't get. CYMA also started producing many of their own variants of guns that they designed themselves near the end of their life but had next to no spare parts support.

A Cybergun Sig 556 is most likely a rebranded CYMA as other than King Arms who are much higher quality no one really makes the 556 (Hazard you are thinking of the 552, TM doesn't make a 556.) I have owned one and sold it locally so its still kicking around somewhere. The exterior is rock solid but I never opened the mechbox; supposedly it comes badly shimmed and with bad airseal but mine shot 385fps out of the box so dunno.

ECHO1 rebrands mostly Jing Gong guns and actually does manufacture some of their own in a way. They got rights to sell some guns from the JG factory that where never under the JG name. They claim they open all the guns and reshim them and do a general tune up in the US before selling the guns publicly but as far as I know that doesn't mean much. They still aren't highly reliable and stories of people getting ECHO1 lemons are not hard to find (but they aren't common either.)

hey guys, i saw some airsoft guns made by a company called "AimTop" at a surplus store. has anyone ever heard of this brand?