A Guide to Hoppers

There are basically 4 types of hoppers. Gravity fed, Agitated and Force Fed, Sound Activated.

Gravity Feed Loaders - Rely on the force of gravity to load the paintballs through the feed neck, and into the marker’s chamber.

Agitating Loaders - Have eye sensors at the top of the feed neck which sense the paintballs being loaded into the marker. If they sense a still paintball (when you are not shooting), the propeller remains still. If they don’t sense a paintball, or the paintballs are not still in the vision of the sensor (when you are shooting), the propeller spins, and loads paintballs into the feed neck of the loader. Basically, agitating loaders feed paintballs until there is no space left in-between the marker’s chamber, and the propeller. So, in other words, they feed paintballs into the loader’s feed neck.

Sound Activated Loaders - Once the sound sensor in the loader hears the marker being fired, the propeller spins and feeds another paintball into the feed neck of the loader. If the sensor does not hear the marker being fired, the propeller remains still. These also merely feed paintballs into the loader’s feed neck.

Force Feed Loaders - These loaders have all of the power they need. They actually “force” the paintballs directly into the marker’s chamber to be fired, unlike agitating loaders while they feed into the loader’s feed neck. There will never be any space left open in the feed neck of the loader, or the chamber.

When you first get a gun, IT will probably come w/ a Gravity Fed hopper. No batteries and you have to shake it all the time.

Once you start shooting faster, you will notice that you will break a lot of paint. this is because you are “out shooting” the hopper. Which means that you are shooting faster than the hopper Can feed. Most Gravity fed hoppers can only feed about 7-8 BPs or Balls Per second

Then you will probably Discover the 12vlt. Revolution hopper by View loader. this hopper Retail for around $50-$60. this is a Basic Agitated Hopper. Other hoppers in this Category are the Ricochet Series (around $60 or so), The new Halo TSA Front man and Back man (about $70 for LED and like $85 or so for LCD model) You also have the Empire Reloader which is a Sound Activated Hopper and cots around $50. You also have some of the more “crummy hoppers” like the Zap “vibrator” loader and Extreme Rage loader. All of these loaders feed about 13 BPS

The next Category you have is a Cross-breed Kind of hopper. It’s called the Evolution II. Also known as the Egg or Egg2. This hopper Uses in a sense both Force feed and Agitation. IT retails for about $80, and you can also buy an Upgrade board for $25 which makes it feed around 16 BPS

The Final Type of Hopper is called the Force Feed. Only 1 hopper on the market uses Force Feed technology and that is the Halo B. IT utilizes a Spring driven “drive cone” to have constant tension on the Paintballs so immediately after 1 is shot, another is Driven right into it’s place. Some guns have problems w/ these type’s of hoppers b/c of the force they feed paintballs at. A second type of Force Feed hopper which is the Halo B but with a different board in it is called the Reloader B, made by Empire Paintball. This is the Same as a Halo B but instead of using Eyes to detent paint, it uses the Sound of the gun being fired.

Both hoppers feed about 22+ BPS.

I hope this helped with all those Questions.