[ILLusion]

I have the 9Ball mag rubbers... testing? Never done it. But they're purple, which match the purple Shooters Design lips feed lips on the magazine!!! Come on, that alone HAS to count for something, right? It probably improve performance by 30 units, or something like that.


Never tested. Maybe some day.



I've never published these results, even though they're exactly 5 years old as of today... wow, didn't know it was the 5 year anniversary till I looked at the records now.

I'll finally publish the results here, but despite the unanimous results for one particular brand, I never chose it as overall winner, which I will discuss later.
While KM was not actually the best performing valve in terms of output velocities, I ruled KM as the best performing overall a couple of reasons... let's look at the result summary for each valve tested.

The following conditions were followed for the test:
Temperature: ~25C
Magazine: Tokyo Marui OEM
BB: KSC Perfect
BB Weight: 0.25g
Piston Head: PGC Aluminum
Floating Valve: RCC Power Bulb
Spring Guide: KM
Recoil Spring: Guarder 150%
Inner Barrel: Tanio Koba Twist 6"
Loading Nozzle: PGC
Plug Spring: Stock:
Hammer Spring: Guarder 150%
Sample: 20 Shots


I don't know why, but I never took a control sample using the stock valve. But Daiviet, for what it's worth, to answer your question, on average, I've seen the KM valves give an fps boost of 20-35fps on builds that I assemble these days.


The best values have been highlighted in RED:
The worst values have been highlighted in BLUE:

KM TN:
AVERAGE VELOCITY: 324.7 fps
EXTREME SPREAD: 14.5 fps
AVERAGE DEVIATIONS: 3.01 fps
ENERGY RANGE: 0.05854105 ft. lbs.
STANDARD DEVIATION: 4.043578405 fps


Tanio Koba:
AVERAGE VELOCITY: 327.725 fps
EXTREME SPREAD: 9.3 fps
AVERAGE DEVIATIONS: 1.555 fps
ENERGY RANGE: 0.059636902 ft. lbs.
STANDARD DEVIATION: 2.112587588 fps


Guarder High Output:
AVERAGE VELOCITY: 326.665 fps
EXTREME SPREAD: 14.6 fps
AVERAGE DEVIATIONS: 3.515 fps
ENERGY RANGE: 0.059251745 ft. lbs.
STANDARD DEVIATION: 4.270741955 fps


Guarder Hi-Perforamnce:
AVERAGE VELOCITY: 320.235 fps
EXTREME SPREAD: 12.6 fps
AVERAGE DEVIATIONS: 3.6115 fps
ENERGY RANGE: 0.056942106 ft. lbs.
STANDARD DEVIATION: 4.222530421 fps


Nine Ball:
AVERAGE VELOCITY: 323.95 fps
EXTREME SPREAD: 20.9 fps
AVERAGE DEVIATIONS: 4.49 fps
ENERGY RANGE: 0.058270924 ft. lbs.
STANDARD DEVIATION: 5.705814209 fps




As you can see, Nine Ball sucks. Hard. It pretty much ate sweaty nuts. No matter how I tried to configure or reconfigure the valve and those stupid ball bearings it comes with, it performed equally bad ALL the time. I later on gave them another chance in the Marui Sig Sauer P226, and the performance was even worse. In the case of the P226, there were NO velocity increases over stock, and overall performance was worse. So I got rid of the valves for all platforms.

The results above will also answer some questions about the two Guarder valves. The High Output valve did put out higher average velocity, and also had huge highest velocities (not shown), but the extreme spread and standard deviation was also wider (not good.) The "Hi-Performance" model did exactly as described and controlled the output a bit more, which also earned it as the lowest output valve of the group.

Now, let's discuss the seemingly unbeatable results of the Tanio Koba valve. The Tanio Koba valve single handedly took the entire group to the cleaners and back, by unanimously winning every category with the BEST values. But why did I NOT choose it to be the best valve? The reason why, was due to major slide cycling issues. I never found the time to explore why, but when I used the Tanio Koba valves, while the FPS output was amazing, the ability to cycle the slide was abysmally weak. Felt power was weak, and at times, it was so weak that the next round could not chamber. It sucked! I honestly could not pick a valve to be the "best", if it could not even function in that regard, and for that, I tossed it to the bottom of the pile (even below Nine Ball.)

I later on heard from some other users that they were able to get the Tanio Koba valves to work with a stock hammer spring. Who knows. I never found the time to revisit these valves, and they're quite difficult to get.

With the Tanio Koba valves out of the way, I looked at the results again, and while the KM valves did not output the highest velocity output, they did have the 2nd highest average velocity, the second tightest extreme spread, the tightest average deviation, and the tightest standard deviation.

Tight is good.

Conclusion: KM Win.