Paintball Buyer's Blog

Ask any veteran player, ”What is a good beginner paintball gun?” or “What’s a good woodsball marker?”, and the name Tippmann will be dropped the most. Tippmann has been making paintball markers for over 25 years and while they remain the top choice for recreational and woodsball play they were never popular for tournament-style paintball. Their long length, weight and clunky recoil don’t lend themselves to the high speed, every-inch-counts format of speedball. Tippmann recognized a growing type of participant that they are calling a hybrid paintball player; someone playing both styles. Tippmann decided to make this player a marker they would use for both. Enter the Tippmann Crossover paintball marker.

In 2010 Tippmann introduced the X7 Phenom, a pneumatic blow-forward design that could change from electronic to mechanical mode on the fly. It was only natural for Tippmann Sports to take the Phenom’s FlexValve design and engineer a tournament marker body around it. They took the operating pressure down to under 300 psi so it should be gentle for fragile paint and lower recoil. The ability to switch from manual to electronic modes continues with the Tippmann Crossover but the Cyclone Feed does not. It is being replaced by a vertical clamping feedneck threaded into the aluminum body. Since each shot is not individually force fed anymore a set of breakbeam anti-chop eyes are incorporated to keep those paintballs in one piece as they run through the marker. All of these features and more are housed in a tournament style gun that is under 20 inches with the included 12 inch barrel and weighs in at 2.4 pounds. Not too shabby!

So is this really the perfect paintball marker for the ‘hybrid’ player? Pretty close to it! On the woodsball side it has an engine that has proven to work in all adverse conditions, matte black, manual operation option and better air efficiency than Tippmann mechanical markers. On the speedball end it is using a proven low maintanence design, compact and programmed for major tournament modes such as PSP, NPPL and Millenium. Its looking to be the ideal all weather, all conditions, all field style paintball gun. The Tippmann Crossover paintball marker will be an interesting contender when it hits the shelves!

Some of the features incorporated into the Tippmnn Crossover marker include the following:

• .68 caliber electro-pneumatic marker
• New, lightweight compact design
• Integrated break beam anti-chop eyes
• Ability to work in both electronic and mechanical modes
• Low pressure operation under 300 PSI
• Internal gasline
• Magnetic hall effect trigger switch
• Multiple adjustable firing modes, including semi-auto, auto-response, 3-shot burst, PSP, NPPL and Millennium
• Tournament lock switch
• Adjustable clamping feedneck with vertical feed
• Machine-milled upper body
• Bottom regulator with the ability to convert to a front regulator
• Fully compatible with HPA and Nitrogen; for CO2, see owner’s manual for details
• Two year limited warranty
• A-5/X7 threads

If you are a regular reader of this blog you’ll remember that I wrote a piece when we started stocking Stiffi Carbon Fiber Paintball Barrels again. The response has been overwhelming for these excellent paintball barrels that combine featherlight weight and awesome accuracy. We realized that we needed to expand the Stiffi selection… but there was a problem, a huuuuuuuuge problem.

You see, because Stiffi barrels are not machined from a tube or metal blank but instead constructed from precision components. There are near endless configurations and while some barrels are regularly kept in stock, the majority of our Stiffi barrels are built just for our orders. Here’s where the problem was. First of all, they are made in nine barrel threads (Tippmann A5, Tippmann 98 Custom, Cocker, Old Angel, Angel 06, Angel One, Shocker SFT, Impulse/ Ion and Spyder… then there are three standard lengths (12, 14 and 16 inches)… then there are three standard bore sizes (.687, .689 and .691 for most barrel threads or .691, .693 and .695 for Tippmann A5 and 98). That right there is already 99 choices of barrels… and thats just for the single barrels, not even taking the Switch Kits into account !

We have been stocking the Classic Finish barrels… those techno-cool looking ones that everyone expects carbon fiber to look like. However, Site Mfg also produces a huge variety of patterns for the Stiffi Barrels as well. Instead of anodizing these are actually a tough wrap applied and then cemented and sealed to the barrel. Because of this process virtually any finish or graphic can be applied to the barrels. For a simple example lets just say that they offer 15 finishes… thats 1435 individual barrels ( again, not including the Switch Kits) we would need to stock ! Don’t get me wrong, we pride ourselves on a great selection but that would take up a huge section of our warehouse… we’d drown in carbon fiber barrels ! There are thousands and thousands of options.

In effort to get our customers access to Stiffi barrels we’ve worked out a program with the manufacturer. When you place an order for any Stiffi Carbon Fiber Barrel or Stiffi Switch Kit marked with double asterisks (**) on our website, we automatically place an order with Stiffi. Your barrel is put into the express production line, built just for you over the next few days. Rather than wait for the barrel to be shipped to our warehouse, received and then reshipped we instead have it delivered factory-direct from the manufacturer to you. If the barrel was part of an order that would have qualified for free shipping then we will eat the shipping costs ! Bear in mind that because of the delay in shipping for making the barrel they cannot be shipped expedited services like Next Day Air.

Check out our line of US Army Paintball Guns, Project Salvo Paintball Guns and variety of Cheap Paintball Guns