product review
It’s not often a paintball gun gets more than
one review from a single source during its lifetime on the market. Even rarer when a single
paintball gun is reviewed closer to three times,
but in this case it’s worthy. After a rocky start,
the Vanguard Demon came back out blazing
and made some cuts in the National Professional Paintball League in the hands of Frank
Connell and New England Avalanche. Not
long after, Connell, a longtime industry veteran
and professional player on numerous successful teams like the Philadelphia Americans and
now Avalanche, purchased Vanguard and took
over the manufacture of the marker himself.
Most recently he and Vanguard announced
and then released a redesigned bolt system for
the marker that current owners may acquire
by sending their Demon in for a refit: a modification that, Connell said, drastically improves
performance of the gun. We still had our test
Demon laying around so we simply had to find
out for ourselves if the new mods were as good
as Frank said.
Let’s start with what the Vanguard Demon
actually is. A spool valve marker originally
70
released by Vanguard, the English company
responsible for the Creed marker before it,
the Demon was intended to be a next step
for the company, offering spool valve accuracy with increased air efficiency. Picked up
by sponsored NPPL professional team New
England Avalanche led by Frank Connell, the
team carried the marker to a few competitive
finishes, showing that it had the ability to run
with the big dogs. Our early reviews of the
marker showed it to be light, accurate, fast
and impressively efficient. Cut from light but
durable aluminum, the marker offered, and
still offers, plenty of features including an Autococker threaded barrel kit with plenty of ports,
a lever-clamping vertical feed neck, hose-less
operation, an on/off bottle adapter, .45 grip
frame with wrap-around rubber grips, an adjustable blade double trigger, OLED screen
and a rechargeable battery. The Demon is
extremely lightweight at just under two pounds
with a barrel threaded, and has the ability to
remain extremely light as it is efficient enough
to be used with a small, lightweight air bottle
like a 45 cubic inch, 4500psi model and still
provide plenty of shots.
PAINTBAL