New Smarts Parts Impulse 2009

[FIREFLY]

http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu48/drealot/paintball/fireflybannerlarge.jpg



Im interested to see opinions and or reviews on the new impulse


http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t245/andreattewell/impulse-black-blue.jpg

[Thalion]

Too early to know for sure.


I really like:

-Freak comes standard
-No gas line

I really don't like:
-Price (but I can't really complain... if it's worth it)

[Bizzare87]

Its going to be very fast very accurate and very gas efficient.

[MMPTgoblin]

In my opinion fast, accurate, and gas efficiancy is exactly what you want. Anything else is icing on the cake, but I would wait until the price goes down.

[FIREFLY]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJyrUW5Bxi8

[FIREFLY]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqbjFZJv5eQ

[Gizmo]

I've been watching the buy/sale on a bigger forum and people are getting Imp's and trading them off. I've watched this one imp go through 3 hands in the past week n half. I'm not sure why but I'm sure your find reviews on **nation. I'm not sure if I can say the site.

[braddoc]

I held them and saw them shot @ chicago

well.. while it did shoot at Chicago. The marker had some problems with barrel breaks and I think it eventually muddied up the eyes, and had to be taken back to the SP tent.

The frame feels really good in my hand, but the front grip (which is all it is, a plastic grip) is pretty narrow and feels a bit slim since we are all so used to grabbing onto regulators.

It has a balanced valve. Which in fine in theory but it is also another o ring seal that the player has to worry about. Its not exactly in an easy to get to spot either. Balanced valves have been notorious for being a pain in the behind, so unless Smart Parts figured something out nobody else has, the Impulse is going to be a bit more maintenance demanding than your ordinary poppet.

The balanced valve is mostly about reducing kick, but Lucky released balanced valves for all sorts of guns, cyborgs included, and nobody really felt much of a difference.

The original impulse was my dream gun when I first started playing paintball back in 2000. But I can't say the same about this one. At least, not right now.

The top tube can be disconnected from the bottom, they market it for "aesthetic" reasons and "ease of maintenence"

but smart parts recently has become very interested in producing and marketing .50 cal paintballs. I think you are going to see different bored upper tubes for this reason. They might want to push the market into smaller paint bores.

[Thalion]

I'm not sure why SP thinks they'll succeed with .50 paintballs.

There used to be other calibers out there, but .68 became standard because it was big enough to remain less affected by the wind and could leave a reliable mark for players to readily discern a hit from splatter.

[MondoMor]

The balanced valve is mostly about reducing kick, but Lucky released balanced valves for all sorts of guns, cyborgs included, and nobody really felt much of a difference.


I've got a Lucky balanced valve in a "tinkering" marker (similar to a Promaster) and it didn't reduce the LPR pressure needed to fire very much. Lucky's design had two extra o-rings on the valve pin, and I think the increased friction removed any gain from the pressure balancing.

Due to the layout, the Lucky style of balanced valves don't fully "balance"; there's still a considerable force from air pressure keeping the valve closed.

Smart Parts' new Impulse poppet is a much better idea; it has only one extra o-ring, and has a better balance ratio - in theory the only force that will need to be overcome to open the valve is the valve spring plus the friction from the extra o-ring.

Azodin's Zenith marker, Mokal's Aura, some old Action Markers guns and some Angels use a similar type of valve as the new Impulse, so it's a proven concept.

Azodin calls theirs "ZeRO", and there's a good diagram here:
http://www.azodin.com/support/zero.asp

The only layout difference between the Azodin ZeRO and the Impulse is that the Impulse uses a fully pneumatic-activated striker, while the ZeRO-based guns are blowbacks.

[braddoc]

Very informative post, Mondo. Thank you.