How Much Better are TM and CA ?

[Old School Punk]

Hey guys; so it is becoming apparent to me that the guys that are "really into Airsoft" all own Tokyo Marui and Classic Army brand guns. Is this just because of the "name", or are the products from these manufacturers that much better?

I currently own 2 Jing Gong all metal AEGs and they ROCK! Now I have never fielded either weapon, but they seem to work just fine for me.
They both shoot around 400 FPS, and they never give me any trouble, so is a "name brand" gun made in Japan really worth 3 times the money?

Just wondering?

Gordo

[kalnaren]

Originally Posted by Old School Punk

Hey guys; so it is becoming apparent to me that the guys that are "really into Airsoft" all own Tokyo Marui and Classic Army brand guns. Is this just because of the "name", or are the products from these manufacturers that much better?

I currently own 2 Jing Gong all metal AEGs and they ROCK! Now I have never fielded either weapon, but they seem to work just fine for me.
They both shoot around 400 FPS, and they never give me any trouble, so is a "name brand" gun made in Japan really worth 3 times the money?

Just wondering?

Gordo

With regards to TM there are little things that make them better. Generally, the QC is much, much higher. The guns are much better tuned and the internals are built out of higher quality materials, which means they run smoother (just listen to the sound a TM makes compared to a clone) and usually last a lot longer. Also, since china guns are all clones of TM to varying degrees of accuracy, aftermarket parts will pretty much always fit a TM... but frequently require "tweaking" to get them to fit on clones because the manufacturing tolerances are not as high.

As for Classic Army, the internals can be hit or miss. Some last for 20,000+ rounds and others have them fail after only a few thousand. What does it for CA guns is the externals. Every CA gun I've seen has vastly superior externals to any clone gun. I've done side-by-side comparisons of a CA36, TM G36, and JG G36, and the CA body wins by far. Every CA armalite I've seen also has an incredebly solid metal body that clones don't come even close to matching.

When you just casually browse the "doctor's corner" on this forum or similar on other forums, there is a higher degree of failure with stock clones than stock "name brand" guns.

As clones go, JG is very, very good, probably the best before you hit G&G and the rest of the "name brands". But if you look at other clone companies -CYMA, dboys, Bell, Wellfire, etc. there is no comparison. They may have one or two guns in thier line that are good but most severly compromise somewhere.

[WingZER0]

It's got a lot to do with history. Back in early 2000 TM was THE defacto AEG manufacturer. All others were basically hit or miss or the same amount or less money, most the time it was miss. There were lots of horror stories with mech boxes cracking or gears grinding right out of the box with guns not made by TM.

Classic Army was notorious for this with their first generation of AEGs, to the point of which the mainstream advice was buy a CA gun, throw out the mech box and put in a TM mech box and motor instead. That went on for a few years, and it essentially became doctrine to the point of which it was the unquestionable truth for a long while.

Then wonder of wonders, CA start tightening up their quality control, and other companies started coming with reasonably QCed guns for considerably less then what a TM would cost. Nowadays clone AEG companies are a dime a dozen, but there are quite a few older players that have long bitter memories struggling against first generation clones.

Nowadays CA and TM are not THAT much better then the clone companies, but they are slightly better out of the box due to stricter quality controls. It becomes moot with upgrades and tuning, and I'd still buy the occasional TM gun because of that. TM also is the forerunner of AEGs and some GBBs, they spend the money on R&D for new guns to come out with whilst the others save on that cost and produce clones for less.

[Donster]

i made a thread about this. hopefully it might answer some of your questions:

http://airsoftcanada.com/showthread.php?t=72497

[Old School Punk]

Thanks for the awesome responses guys! You explained things very well.

Hey Donster, I really liked that post you put up, I thought that it was really well written and I found it very informative. Thanks for posting the link.

Gordo

[Amos]

When the entire world of high-end aftermarket upgrade parts are precicely machined for Tokyo Marui...

In the end if you upgrade a TM M4A1 and a JG M4A1 the same, the TM will preform a lot better.

[Donster]

Originally Posted by Old School Punk

Thanks for the awesome responses guys! You explained things very well.

Hey Donster, I really liked that post you put up, I thought that it was really well written and I found it very informative. Thanks for posting the link.

Gordo

glad you liked it! i really appreciate your feedback!

Originally Posted by Amos

When the entire world of high-end aftermarket upgrade parts are precicely machined for Tokyo Marui...

In the end if you upgrade a TM M4A1 and a JG M4A1 the same, the TM will preform a lot better.

exactly. the same can be said for all clones. The reason being is that the non-clones will have tighter tolerances and not have as much play between the parts, which = better air seal/compression etc etc. This will transcribe to greater accuracy, better performance and better durability