Q&A: Spyder Sense: Adding a regulator to a Spyder Aggressor XT
By Chris DeForge
Q&A Spyder Sense
Scott on Facebook recently asked me a question about how he could add a regulator to his Spyder. Spyder (previously Kingman) makes a variety of models and many of the ones still in playing circulation are models that are a decade old, or even older than that. To make things even more complicated, many of the Spyders you find on eBay or at garage sales may be incomplete, or might be a mish-mash of parts.
For example, you might have the grip frame of a Spyder Sonix mounted on the body of a Spyder 2000. Sometimes, the parts thrown together may even be from Spyder “clones”, other paintball markers modelled after the Spyder but marketed by different companies and under different names. The majority of these guns are referred to as stacked tube blowback markers, a reference to their design where the bolt sits in the top “tube” of the body and the striker rests in the bottom “tube”.
Scott’s particular marker was a Spyder Aggressor XT. These guns are definitely an older model of Spyder. They feature a .45 style grip frame with textured rubber panels. These particular models did not have a foregrip of any kind. Instead, hard line runs from a fitting that attaches to the body. The steel braid hose connects to an air adapter source (ASA, where you screw your tank in). This Spyder would not be able to take a vertically mounted regulator without a little bit of work.
In this case, you would have to remove the hard line and find an appropriate fitting to take its place. You would have to match the thread pitch and install the fitting correctly. Fittings are available commercially, although a lot of common paintball ones and some great advice can be found at Palmer’s Pursuit Shop. I would suggest maintaining steel braid over replacing with macroline in order to accommodate the high operating pressure. I don’t think there are many cases where a regulator helps out that much with most blowback style guns.
In some cases, a regulator may even inhibit the operation of the gun. The output pressure of the tank and the operating pressure range of the high pressure regulator (HPR) must be considered. In this case, I don’t think it’s worth the effort. If you’re just looking for something to use as a vertical foregrip, one could easily come up with a homebrew solution to place over the steel braid cable. That cable virtually never needs to be removed. It should not arbitrarily leak. Some Spyders have a removable foregrip or gas through grip whose female thread pitch will accommodate a regulator easily. This just happens to be one of the ones that doesn’t. Sorry!
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