Nasty Impulse from Paintball Wholesalers
Nasty Impulse from Paintball Wholesalers
After owning two of these markers - Stock 2K2 and a Nasty (shown above) - I have learnt one thing: Impulses and I do NOT get along! Despite looking forward to trying out what I thought was going to be a decently priced electro, I was very disappointed in the performance I had with these markers. I had nothing but chopping problems with both of them, even despite the eyes on the Nasty.
I think I should have known something was up right from Day #1. My first overall impression was that this is a tall marker. Really tall! Taller than anything I'm used to anyway. The body itself is tall, the feed neck is tall, and my running a drop forward on it at the time didn't help either. Now some of this is fixable: the drop can be changed (and is now gone since I now use a Conquest), the feed neck can be changed (they now have lower rises with colours that match), and an aftermarket frame like the HSW I-Frame can reduce the marker height by about half an inch, but that's also after a $250 CDN price tag! But if you can live with the height, then all the power to you.
Since I knew next to nothing about these markers (and at the time there was very few locally), I did what I do best and did some research on the Internet to see what I could learn. Despite the fact there is some good Owners Groups out there, I wasn't happy with what info I did find. Now, I like a marker that has what I call "hard & fast rules". What that means is that if I have a problem, there's one solution; if I have a part to set up, this is how to do it. You get the idea. Unfortunately I found nothing like that for the Impulse anywhere! The most common reply I found was to "experiment with your settings until you find the right one for your setup". Well, if you don't know how the marker's supposed to shoot when it's 100%, then how do you know you found the right setting?!? I couldn't find a good setting recommendation for dwell, pressure, etc... since the settings would vary depending on what you had for internals (even stock!). The sad part is, I was left with the impression that settings could be different between even between two markers with the same setup of internals. So don't ask me how to make sure everything is set up right because I never did figure that one out.
One of my biggest beef about the Impulse was trying to figure out what was behind the whole 1200 Grains issue with the marker. For those of you that don't know, this is supposed to be some magic combination of the combined weight of the bolt, bolt pin, hammer, and ram shaft, that's supposed to give the best efficiency and consistency for the Impulse. My experience in researching the origins of this is I believe it's a load of crap. I asked on one of the Owners Groups about this and I had such varied answers on the topic. One group claimed 1200 grains was the best. Another group claimed they had just as good, if not better results with weights past 1200 and up to 1500+ grains of weight (which is close to stock)! Finding the origins of where the 1200 grains came from wasn't too hard (with a small amount of effort), but trying to figure out how or what method they used to get the 1200 grains was about as successful as teaching a cow to sew. I could not get a good answer to why this weight was chosen. This tends to leave me to believe this is some number that some company threw out, and instead of asking about it, it just became gospel within Impulse circles. There are two things everyone does agree on though: that it's best to not go lower than 1200 grains of internal weight, and the best setup for kick reduction is a light top (bolt and bolt pin) and a heavy bottom (hammer and ram shaft).
On a good note though, I did learn a couple of things from my research. New Designz makes the highest recommended aftermarket parts for the Impulse, and a LPR is one of the best performance upgrades you can get for one.
I found out the hard way that Smart Parts has some sort of fetish with Loctite! I couldn't believe these guys put Loctite on the ball detents! Consequently, I ended up destroying the outside of one of the detents while trying to get one off. The hex key hole was destroyed, and I had to resort to using a set of Robopliers to get it off. Now, I found out about the detents while trying to get them out to clean the eye from paint because the microscopic screw used to hold the eye in place was also Loctited in. But in the end a good deal of my chopping turns out that the eye wasn't working after all, and had to be sent back to Paintball Wholesalers for warranty. I also know of someone else who had to do the same thing to their new Nasty. In talking to Paintball Wholesalers, this is where I found out about SP's love affair with Loctite, as well as SP's ability to send out Impulses with their dwell cranked right up, or other issues relating to general setup. Maybe someone should tell the Gardner Brothers that they need to take some of the money they're getting from suing everyone and stick it into QUALITY CONTROL!
At one point I was looking at a list of upgrades I could do to the Nasty I had. The HSW frame was a consideration, a long with a lower feed neck, both to reduce height. A LPR was in the list, and a consideration for the anticipated WAS board was in there too, along with a few changes to the internals. But by the end, I was looking at almost another $600 to $800 worth of upgrades on a marker I already paid about $1300 for. In the end, I'd still have just an Impulse, albeit a very expensive one. That combined with my overall experience and height issues led to the eventual sale of the above Nasty, before I sunk any good cash into it.
Now despite my experience shown above , I can't say this is a bad marker overall, just that it's been a bad marker for me. I've known enough guys with one who just love them. However, they still earn a #3 on my list of "Top Paperweights".
ADDENDUM:
Feb. 11/06 :
I'm utterly flabbergasted on how cheap markers are selling lately. I just saw
someone selling a black Nasty Impulse with some upgrades and no barrel for $350
CDN! This is unfortunately a product of a phenomenon known as "market
saturation". There's a ton of old Impulses on the market ever since (or I should
say even before) the SP Ion came out, which was dirt cheap as it was.
There's actually a lot of decent markers on the market that are only a
couple of years old, but selling for next to nothing lately. In hindsight, I'm
sure glad I didn't hold on to this marker and sink a ton of cash into it.
Jan. 03/10 : SP came out with a new Impulse in 2009 so it became a $1000 marker again. However, rumors have been circulating that SP is no more (reports of no product on factory shelves) and may in fact completelty become GI Milsim, pushing the production of the .50 cal paintball.
SNIPER BOB, 2000-20010