The Spyder

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Bill's Paintball Page

PAINTBALL - The Kingman Spyder

My current collection.

My current set of equipment.


The Spyder



The Spyder Series of paintball markers by Kingman International are some of the most popular recreational paintball guns being used today. The Spyder falls with in the classification of a starter or middle-class gun, but it can be easily upgraded to a lower-end tournament level marker(A marker is just synonym for Paintball Gun). This makes it a great gun for newbies, since they can upgrade it over time. The gun is very simple internally, even the trigger is easy to figure out, this makes personal modifications and disassembly easy on the user, while making problems with the marker easy to diagnose. The Spyder is very efficient, being able to get 600-800 shots from a 12 oz. tank without an expansion chamber and 800-1000 shots with one attached.

Variants

There are now multipul styles of the Spyder. All of them are essentially the same gun. The First and Second generation Spyder were almost identicle except the second lost the "Resavior Plug" which is essential to all of those thinking about running a low pressure chamber at this time... Other than that - same thing. The Compact-A and Compact-P came next. The "A" had an Aluminum frame and the "P" had a plastic one (hence A and P) The P's reduced some weight but broke after a while of play, while the A's were very popular. The Compact boasted a vertical adaptor which allowed the air tank to drop vertically from the gun, and made adding expansion chambers, regulators, and other gadgets very easy. Recently the Spyder was refited and the Elite series came out, which had a better grip, barrel and bolt. This version allowed the user to let his Spyder to transform form a typical Spyder to a compact one with an adaptor. Right along with the Elite came the Spyder Special Edition which was a very nice pice of work. It came equiped with an improved barrel, bolt, two-finger trigger, raised sight rail, better grips, expansion chamber, hard bottom line, and a stylist body with splash anodization. It only performed marginally better than the classic spyders but it has many aftermarket parts that owners would eventually put on any way, and the price was wonderful for what you got. Another Spyder possibly called the "Snyper" has been released soposedly. I have no information on this marker... With a few exceptions, almost all of the Spyder's parts are interchageable between models.
PS - Another interesting thing about all of the variants is it's compatibility with Kingman's line of Hammer pump guns, which include (as far as I'm aware) the Hammer A, P, and Plus. The primary compatibility is the barrels which can be taken most of the time from one and put on the other.

Accuracy and Range

As far as accuracy and range go, that depends on the barrel/bolt combination. I use a Smart Part's BOSS Barrel and used to use a Starfire bolt, with costs around $65 for the both of them. I have seen the most improvement in my gun with a new barrel, and some with a new bolt. The range falls somewhere between 125 and 135 feet, with a 200+ foot range at a 45 degree angle. This is at field legal speeds, most likely set well below 300 FPS. The barrel makes the gun shoot dead on, even at extended ranges. This allows the player to give excellent fire support or awesome front-line firepower. The barrel also silences the gun very well and plus it is the least expensive in Smart Part's line. The Starfire bolt as several advantages. It is inexpensive, it does not use o-rings, and it adds to the accuracy and range. On the downside, the bolt has to be modified in several ways before it performed well for me, although there are many Starfire users that never had a problem. There is an older picture of my gun setup right here. It is the same as the above, just larger.

The Trigger

The trigger system on the Spyder is wonderful. It is very smooth, even before a trigger mod. and with one it is one of the best. Stock it can shot 5-7 rounds/sec depending on how much caffeine you drank before the game. With modifications expect an easy 7+ rounds/sec. At this pace it can keep up with or even outshoot most Autocockers and some Automags, which gives it a definite advantage over other guns in its class. If you are going to fire at a sustained rate like that I recommend you get a VL-2000 or Revelution loading system to load the balls faster, you may need one, although I get along fine without one. For standard play you will just need a basic loader, whatever size you like. The Spyder series comes stock with a powerfeed which loads the balls with more force, and an anti-doublefeed which limits the ball breaks to a minimum.

The Clash of the Spyders

The Spyder is very lightweight. The Compact weighs in at just under 2 pounds, making it one of the lightest metal markers on the market today. The basic Spyders is slightly heavier, but it is more balanced. Many people wonder which is better, the Spyder, the Compact-P, the Compact-A, the Elite, or the Special Edition and even though they are essentially same gun, I would have to go with the Special Edition sice it is equiped with so many extras. After that, and if you aren't planning on spending that much, go with the Elite since it is transformable, then the Compact-A (allows for expansion), Standard Spyder (If you want Low Pressure be sure to get an older one!), then Compact-P.

Overall

Overall the Spyder is an excellent marker. For the money, there are few markers that come close. I recommend the marker to anyone getting into the sport and to any tournament players looking for a good backup gun. Oh yea, by the way I wrote up a little troubble shooting guide to the spyder right here.

THE END

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