Retro Gun Review - AGD Longbow

[Cdn_Cuda]

Throw on your trucker hat, Juicy velour leisure suit and crank the 50 Cent. We’re going back to the mid-2005s when SpecOps Paintball sold the Longbow kit for popular markers like Ions and Automags.

I’ll be taking a look at a battle worn AGD Tac-One with a Longbow kit I picked up locally. So what exactly is the Longbow kit? It’s a large stock and mag upgrade kit that turn your Tac-One into a “sniper”. It adds a body cover, a stock and remote line adaptor and most importantly a mag feed. So you essentially allows you to have mags for your mag.

So over the next little while I’ll be posting info and impressions of this classic beast.

[Cdn_Cuda]

So the basis of the gun is the tried and true platforms, an X-valved Automag with the tactical oriented Tac-One body, meaning it’s got some rails to attach things to. That means this thing can absolutely rip but are a bit of a gas hog.

The Automag’s speed, however, is a bit contrary to Longbow Kit, which only has a 20 round mag. It is way too easy to go through 20 rounds on an X-valved mag. So it requires some serious trigger discipline. A single trigger frame would definitely be more fitting for the sniper feel of this marker. It’s also easier to maintain trigger discipline when you can only use one finger.

[fullofpaint]

Oh weird, someone like welded an extension onto the longbow kit, drops it down an extra couple inches.

My dad this setup for years, but without the stock, tank just on the gun, made a great limited paint setup. Thee q-loader version was pretty unique too, with the pod under the barrel, but those pods are just too finicky to be worth it.

[Cdn_Cuda]

I have the Q-loader adaptor and a single pod, so I’ll go over that in my review.

As for the drop, I didn’t realize this was different than the standard Longbow kit. If it was a modification, it’s well done as there is no obvious signs of it. I’ll take a closer look at it though.

[Lt. head-shot]

Could it possibly be a prototype? Dropping the stock down further to get more mask clearance or something?

[Cdn_Cuda]

fullofpaint ’s observation I took a closer look at the SpecOps stock itself. On the inside of the stock there is some weld marks, but it’s been done very nicely for something that wasn’t going to be seen. So this likely could be a home modified version, or perhaps a prototype.

Having since removed the stock I can see the work that done in it a lot better. Pieces are added to the end of the original shroud to extend it. The original holes for the stock were filled and re-drilled at the end of the extension. It was clearly done by someone with some skill.

I also threw on a Flex8 mask on to see how everything lines up when looking down the scope. Mask clears without issue and with that raiser rail it’s perfect height. So whoever set it up did a good job at least!




And finally, with the shroud completely removed:

[Cdn_Cuda]

So now let’s move on to the mag system itself, which is the most important point of the Longbow system.

The mag is a long tube, which holds 18 paintballs with a standard spring feed. Like everything about this gun, these are very long. Just shy of 18 and a half inches, which apparently is the length of a giraffe’s tongue.



Being that these are so long, handling them is a little difficult. I’m not a tall guy, so there’s not a lot of areas of me that are 18 inches long, so hard to keep the mags on me. I only have two mags as well, so I can preload only 40 rounds before having to refill one of the mags. I’ve come up with what I feel is a good enough loading solution using a modified 50 round pod. I’ll get in to that later though.

[Cdn_Cuda]

The mag itself is very simple. And just used a piece of metal with a spring to keep the balls in the mag. When you insert the mag into the body it “opens” the metal piece and balls are pushed forward by the spring.

Mag inserted into the mag adaptor: the brass button is the mag release.


Mag removed to show the “latch”:


And a shot of the mag adaptor and how it feeds into the body:

[Bow]

I wanted one growing up so bad. Spec ops did an amazing job with their old ads with their ghillie suit clad warrior out in the desert.

Snagged one and threw a CF frame on it. Still haven't even aired it up since I bought it, but I love the thing to death. I threw one of those goofy 15 inch ebay machine gun shrouds on mine. Looks really mean.

[Cdn_Cuda]

After much effort involving WD40 and a hair dryer, I’ve managed to remove the shroud. Thankfully no screws were stripped in the process.



Now you can see the base Tac-One Mag in all its glory and just a little bit of the X-valve showing.

[Cdn_Cuda]

There are two small spacing plates that go between the rail
mounts and the Longbow shroud to help keep things nice and tight (or way too tight in this case).

[Cdn_Cuda]

And finally, there is a nub/insert that goes into the feedneck to prevent the balls breaking on the feedneck threads:

[Cdn_Cuda]

Finally, the stock itself. It’s got an air line that runs from the valve to a remote line fitting in the stock and a sold rubber pad on the stock with the SpecOps logo.



And that covers all the physical aspects of the Longbow. I’m not going to review a Tac-One itself as there are way more qualified MCBers to talk about Mags. I’ll touch on it’s performs as a whole whenever I get this to the field.

[Cdn_Cuda]

If anyone has any special requests or questions let me know! I rarely play so it could be a while before I update the review.

[Spider!]

Nice.

Looking back on that particular era, I was fortunate that my son got me out of a 10 year paintball retirement in 2005. We had a lot of nice hardware available at the time and spent the next 10 years playing with a lot of nice used markers.

Some fields today won't let you play with that longbow because it could shoot all 18 balls in one second. 🙄

[Cdn_Cuda]

Thankfully my local fields seem fine with any type of markers. Never had issues with Tippmann response triggers either.

[LhopitalRules]

I wanted one of these so badly when I was a kid. I need to go to my parent's and check my old closet for my Recon magazines.

[Cdn_Cuda]

I’ve ordered in a maintenance kit for the Xvalve so I can put the bolt foam tip back in. I also ordered a feedneck adaptor to be able to run this more as a standard mag. It’s just too tempting not to throw a hopper on this and embrace the speed of the Mag.

The feedneck is a Nummech adaptor that allows you to run an Empire feedneck. My hope is that the mag adaptor will fit over the adaptor so I only need to take the feedneck off when converting it back to a Longbow setup. Then I can loctite it in the feedneck and not worry about damaging the body’s threads.

Udate: Feedneck was unavailable. Staying as a Longbow.

[Euphie]

I would absolutely run one of these with a Q-loader, but I would put the carbon fiber grip frame on there, it just looks wrong to have an intelliframe, I also hold the very unpopular opinion of not really liking the intelliframe too much, I thought it would feel like my E-mag but without the little hump in the back it felt way worse to me than the E-mag. I bet it would look cool with a Ricochet which always felt very tactical looking to me

[Cdn_Cuda]

In a perfect world I’d throw a Nummech single finger mag frame on it. A single trigger would definitely suit this setup.