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BYOP POLICYYES!
THAT'S RIGHT! WHY?? CHOICE. As a former player, I know the pains of getting "stuck" with a producer's paint choice. Face it... A lot of people like a certain kind of paint. A certain brand they know is always good or consistent. A certain ball diameter ["bore"] that works well with their gun. A certain color that they can see fly through the air easier. A certain color that their hopper's "eye" can see better. A certain fill thickness. A certain ball that's better for colder or warmer or more humid weather. So... WHY get stuck with one producer's or field's choice??? Here, you can play with MOST* any kind of paint that you want. The only exclusions are for obvious reasons. 1) You can't use a ball that has a RED fill. This is for obvious reasons... nobody wants to freak out when their kid comes walking toward them with what looks like a gaping wound. 2) You can't use a ball that stains people's clothes. Again - for obvious reasons... How can I tell if a paint I'm looking at will stain, you might ask? Answer: If you're buying it from "ABC-Mart", odds are it will stain. Seriously... Look and ask around. If no field or paintball store sells that type or brand of paint, its probably for a reason. If your friends aren't using it, its probably for a reason. Here's some tips:
HOOP'S HANDY TIPS FOR BUYING PAINT A) Buy it from
a reputable place - preferably a paintball store. Most places
don't stay in business selling paint to people that need paint and
new clothes the next time they play. Buying at a paintball
store also helps guarantee freshness.
At a paintball store, you can open up the box and "look around"
before you buy it. Open the box.
Look for any paint [really bad sign]. Open a bag up and smell
it - if it smells like fish, throw it back. Most
paintball stores have a liberal return policy with their vendors, so
you're not putting them out by pointing out that case of paint is
damaged or stale. C) When it comes to paintball, you want a ball that will fly straight. That means a ball with a consistent, uniform size, with no dimples, little or no "seam" and all of the balls in the bag should be about the same size, give or take a 0.02 bore size. Your gun likely has a 0.68 barrel on it. Your best shot will come when the ball is JUST smaller than your barrel's inner diameter. The tighter the fit, the less air it takes [loose fitting balls let more air escape around the ball, rather than pushing the ball] and the more consistent your speed is. When you shoot "cheap" paint that ranges wildly in size, your shots are all over the place AND at all kinds of different speeds. You want a consistent ball, fitted to your barrel. Ball-to-barrel fit is largely overlooked by inexperienced players. Don't be "that guy." Going to a paintball store, again, is a great thing because you can take your barrel and take a ball out of a bag and test it out. Put the ball in by hand, then blow on it. It should be fairly tight, and it should take some force to blow it out. If you turn blue in the face before it comes out, or if it rolls out the other end before you start blowing, you've got the wrong paint for your barrel.
"OTHER" SUGGESTIONS: Don't, don't, don't .. pick up paintballs and put them in your gun. Remember that paint to barrel matching thing above? Guess what happens when you run paint with small dirt [visible or not] through a gun at 200 MPH? If you guessed that it nicks and gouges the inside of the barrel, creating burrs that'll eventually bust open your paintballs, creating hit-or-miss holes around the ball for air to go around that end up creating/adding "spin" to your balls that will end up meaning your balls go 10 different directions each time you fire it .. you're right! Just don't do it. Don't end up having to buy a $40 barrel to fix the problem $0.40 worth of dirty balls created. Freshness matters. As paintballs age, the shells become more/less brittle. You can usually tell by the smell. Gummy or brittle balls won't fly straight, won't break on contact as intended, and sometimes won't even make it out of your barrel. Paintballs are just a gelatin shell [think "Jello"]. If you get the shell wet, it gets slimy and it sticks to other shells. If you freeze it, it shrinks. If you get it hot, it expands. Change the temperature from hot to cold several times and it dimples and/or loses its round shape. Put pressure on it, it dimples and/or loses its round shape. NONE of those things are good for a paintball. You want to keep the size of the ball as consistent as possible so that the ball-to-barrel match is good. If it is cold outside, put your paint inside where it is room temperature. If you take it from room temperature outside into the cold, put it in a cooler or a blanket to insulate it from the cold. Keep it out of the humidity. Don't stack things on your paint box. Be kind to your paint, and it will reward you with many good times. Be cruel to it, and it will fly anywhere but where you want it to go. Higher price doesn't always mean higher quality. The probability that you'll get a more consistent product exists, but not much else. Like most things, the "middle of the road" is usually a good bet. Don't overpay for the same thing just because it is more expensive or has a shinier box. Don't underpay just because it is cheap. Get to know certain brands or manufacturers. Ask a friend that bought the $70 case of paint if you can shoot a couple of balls through your gun - just to see. Ask the same from a friend that bought the $30 case of paint - just to see. Trade a couple of rounds of the $50 case of paint with them - just to see. You may all be surprised! Get friendly with your local paintball store/vendor! MANY times, manufacturers will sell off "test runs" of high-end paint in unmarked "white box" cases. They may have changed the fill to a 10% thinner fill to see how it stood up to tests, and now they're getting rid of good paint that they can't label it as XYZ paint because it isn't made with the specific XYZ formula. Other times, manufacturers will make what I see as the "same" paint and sell it for half the price. For example... there's a paintball ... we'll call it "Sonic" - a great paintball. The same company makes "Crunk" - also a great paintball. Sonic is $50+- per case, and Crunk is $30+- per case. Same fill. Same shell. The difference - - - Crunk's shell is made from the leftover Sonic material. Think biscuit dough.... You roll out a sheet or dough and cut out circles. After you've cut out all of the circles you can get, you wad it back up, flatten out the dough again and cut a couple of more circles out. The same thing is happening here. They wad up the "Sonic" shell "dough" and cut out more circles and .. viola .. you've got "Crunk." Know your local field and ask around for special "insider information" like this. You may be surprised at what's out there.
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