Reviews

Ace1 Arms OSP Range Up Suppressor

Dom

I have had the luck to personally meet the guy behind Ace1 Arms at this year's IWA show where he gave me a sample of the Dark Earth, 8" version of this OSP Range Up Suppressor. The can works under the same principle as Angry Gun supressors do. There is a short tight bore barrel inside the supressor body but this suppressor body is way more stylish than anything else on the market. The built quality is excellent, no wobbles, threads are perfect even without lube. I even like the two tone anodizing of the different parts. The front plate and back part is slightly darker than the middle part with the logo on it.

The suppressor is eccentric and that means the inner barrel is not running down the center of the can. This is good on handguns with low profile iron sights because the can won't obstruct the field of view. Of course this feature doesn't really matter when the can is attached to a KRISS Vector or an MP5 where the sights are located considarably higher than they are on a handgun.

Using the OSP is quite simple assuming you have the right barrel adapter installed: all you have to do is screw it on your barrel and make sure it is tigh.t But don't worry about if it isn't lined up correctly with your receiver/slide because opening the cam lever on the back of the can will let you rotate it without losing the already achieved tight fit. Once you adjusted the can to the right position just close the cam lever and you're ready to go. An already timed (aligned) OSP can be taken off for transport and it will be always correctly aligned on the same gun as long as you don't take out the barrel adapter.

Changing the barrel adapter is relatively easy, once you seen how the can is built up. For maintenance and changing the barrel adapter you need the OSP tool with the three prongs. When disassembling the suppressor, the cam lever needs to be open! If the cam lever is in the closed position and we're trying to use the OSP tool then we could damage the small teeth on the surface of the spring retainer rendering one of the main features of the can useless.

Align the holes on the back of the suppressor with the tool, insert it flush with the can and turn the tool CCW to take the barrel adapter out. You might need to play with it a little if the two layers of the spring retainer (which are able to rotate independently) aren't lined up. Removing the spring retainer will let you access all the internals of the can.

There is a black internal housing for the inner barrel and the barrel adapter inside of the suppressor. The front of this housing screws in to the front plate of the OSP while the back is attached to the spring retainer. Inside this housing we find a 6.01 inner barrel with a spring around it that will keep the barrel firmly pressed against our airsoft replica's inner barrel plus allows some tolerance since not all the inner barrels end exactly at the end of the outer barrel.

I found that I can use the OSP on any gun which has an inner barrel not longer than the outer one, any longer will expose the OSP's inner barrel at the front of the suppressor but it works best when the inner barrel ends 2-3mm before the end of the outer barrel. The middle part of the suppressor can be reversed this way and the logo will be closer to the gun but this won't affect performance in any way.

The OSP was meant to be used mainly on handguns with threaded outer barrels and for testing I used a KRISS Vector which is basically an oversized pistol as far as barrel length.

This suppressor gives you higher FPS as long as there is extra propallent that leaves the inner barrel and if you know for fact that you have the extra propellant but you still got lower FPS then the two barrels don't connect well. For example testing the OSP on the WE SCAR-L GBB with its stock 260mm inner barrel I get a little lower FPS than I would without using the OSP. The guys at Ace1Arms say they tested the OSP with a WE M14 and the gain in FPS was there.

In theory our airsoft gun (pistol or SMG ) gets more accurate and shoots further as long as we get the same FPS that we had before attaching the Ace1 Arms OSP because the projectile leaves a longer barrel with the same or higher velocity.  With this, airsoft tune-up has never been easier, no need for pricey inner barrel/nozzle/mag valve upgrades, at least in theory. Check the images for size comparison, pictured next to an Angry Gun Power Up Silencer.

At the range I've put the OSP to the test along with an Angry Gun power up silencer. The distance was 25 meters to target, ambient temperature 22 Degrees Celcius. The first Vector (#1) is a used replica while the second (#2) is a brand new piece, out of the box. Internally they are both standard and nothing was changed in them. Four different magazines were used in this test with the WE Nuprol 2.0 gas propellant. As for ammo, I went with the Blaster Devil 0.25g, Biostar 0.25g and Madbull 0.40g.

First, I had to see what the KRISS Vectors can do without any attachment, after that with attachments and various ammo. In all situations the actual gun was sitting in a gun stand and all I had to do is to pull the trigger and change the mags.

Here are the numbers for the average FPS (0.25g BB, 40 shots, Vector #2, Hop-Up ON!!) with the difference between the first and last shot:

  • No silencer/Nuprol - 305.8 (20)
  • OSP/Nuprol - 410.38 (3)
  • Angry Gun/Nuprol - 401.08 (27)
  • No silencer/Green Gas - 319.2 (23)
  • OSP/Green Gas - 422.1 (55)
  • Angry Gun / Green Gas - 417.5 (13)

You would expect that the Nuprol produces higher FPS and normally it does but here I did the Nuprol test first and after I had to empty the magazines completely which resulted in a cooldown so the mags were placed on direct sunlight to warm up. This caused higher numbers, but here I was only checking the consistency of the magazines and the difference between the numbers with and without attachments.

In both cases the FPS gain is about the same in the favor of the Ace1Arms OSP. Here is a nice chart for you to look at when bored at work:

(Bigger chart at the Popular Airsoft Facebook Page)

For the accuracy test I've decided to do ten shots only because the FPS starts to drop after 10-15 shots and I did not want the pressure drop to influence test results. In each case the magazine was full of gas and only 10 rounds were loaded. The recoil did not move the stand but since the gun frame is polymer, the gun moves no matter how I tried to make the stand more rigid. This is why you don't see full auto groupings here, but my stand was still rigid enough to include the two round burst groupings. Each shot was taken two seconds after the other. Now let's take a look at the biggest online collection of shot up cardboard images:

Without any attachments,  #1 produced a 40 cm grouping at 25 meters and I guess that's ok coming from a handgun barrel. The grouping got a bit tighter and went down to 30cm when I switched to burst. So this is the result the OSP needs to improve on.

And it did improve because using the OSP the grouping was a little over 20cm. Using burst mode the grouping got even tighter. It's too bad two "flyers" ruined the target. It was great fun to watch the BBs through my Mojji scope as they closely follow each other and hit the cardboard, you can almost see the pairs as they went in. Next time I will have someone down range to number the hits for me.

As for the Angry Gun silencer the results look bad, but no surprise because its inner barrel is not fixed as tight as the one in the OSP. You can hear the inner barrel moving around even when the silencer attached to the Vector. At least we can say grouping did not get worse, although one BB completely missed the target in burst mode. I need to have a look inside at a later time in order to see how this issue can be addressed.

Next up is the Biostar BB. I did not even bother to try this BB with the Angry Gun silencer after seeing the result of the OSP. Grouping did not improve. As of yet I did not find a Bio BB that matches the performance of the Blaster Devil but please let me know if you know of one. I thought I give a try to Biostar BBs because the degrading process is activated by sunlight (they claim) instead of moisture and this could make Biostar more convenient for users. I will use this brand for outdoor games as long as they don't give me bigger issues than this average grouping.

One would think if you use heavy BBs you get more consistent trajectory, ergo, you get more accurate. Of course you need higher FPS and harder Hop-Up rubber. Here I have higher FPS and V shape rubber, so I thought I might get lucky but as you can see on the image below the grouping is only a little better than the grouping was with Biostar. Using Madbull 0.40g BBs resulted in an average of 375 FPS but obviously the rubber did not like this BB, there were too many flyers (one off the target in single mode), without those the grouping would look more organized than the rest.

It's time to take out the brand new Vector, and you can see that the grouping is way better than the one I posted above using the Vector #1. I think it's time to change my Hop-Up rubber in the Vector #1.

At first, I thought there was no way the grouping will be any better than this but using the OSP further improved the grouping.

Just to make sure I did everything right, I tried Biostar again but groupings weren't any better than the Vector#1 produced.

If you are still here and had not had enough of the cardboard images, here is a last one to look at. Madbull .40g BBs, 45 shots, semi auto with 1 sec intervals.

The Ace1Arms OSP is definitely worth the money especially for those who don't like to dig inside a GBB and spend too much on upgrades. This upgrade is a piece of cake to install, maintain, plus if you take it off you still have your factory gun. The only internal upgrade I would use alongside the OSP is a good quality Hop-Up rubber and maybe a better chamber (at least with the Vector because the original one is just poor to say the least).

It's a shame the OSP won't work well with the WE SCAR. Its inner barrel ends where the outer barrel ends so the OSP's inner barrel cannot provide tight enough fit which results in a lower FPS. As for AEG use, most inner barrels end too deep inside the outer barrel and the OSP simply won't make contact. If you feel like sanding off 2-4mm of your outer barrel then the OSP might work but I could not find a single inner barrel what was tapered the same way as the one on the Vector. I would recommend this product to anyone with a Vector mainly for the reasons mentioned above.

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