Why don't Air Arms make break barrels?

[oneseven]

The short answer is that their first offering was a failure. They are a very profit-orientated company and bearing in mind they don't even make a left handed Pro Sport because of limited demand says it all. They have concentrated their resources in making high value rifles and that I suspect is where they will stay.

I'd be willing to pay for it. Why would they not make money on a British made premium BB if they can turn a profit on the TX and PS?

Their PCPs do nothing for me.

[Rapidnick]

I'd be willing to pay for it. Why would they not make money on a British made premium BB if they can turn a profit on the TX and PS?

Their PCPs do nothing for me.

You are speaking purely personally. You may well be prepared to buy one but that doesn't make it a viable business proposition. The market is crowded AND their history with the PE will make them extra cautious.
AA have limited production space and choose to use that in making higher added value PCPs'.
Don't get me wrong-if they made a break barrel I'd certainly look to buy one too but I won't be holding my breath.

[mikehill]

If I was them I'd cease making the Pro-Sport and replace it with a break barrel around the same quality and price

[Geezer]

The UK isn't the biggest market for airguns.

The US is. The Pro Elite was designed for the US market. It had potential to take lots of sales off the HW80 and put a big dent in sales of the Diana 48/52. And the TX/PS.

For whatever reason, it just didn't catch on. Americans just didn't seem to want a more expensive more powerful HW80 class rifle, despite the fact that they love TXs. So I understand AA's caution.

I think the chances of them making a UK/Germany 12 ft/lbs (16J) level break-barrel are about zero. The market is already crowded and it would have to be very special to persuade enough people to pay a premium over an HW or Diana. It would risk ending up like the recent FWB Sport.

[TonyL]

Geezer, Muskett and Rapidnick - all excellent, valid points.

[TonyL]

Okay, the high-end AA break barrel may not happen.

Maybe there's a whiff of a chance of an AA labelled one, though, although I have no clue as to the age of this rifle.

At the last Boinger Bash, one of the chaps brought along with him an ex-prototype / test mule "Air Arms" break barrel. I had few shots with it;quite nice it was, too.

However, I said to the chap, "Here you go, I'll show you what that is". Basically it was a CZ Slavia break barrel with a CD trigger and (I seem to remember) a different stock. I produced my CZ634 out of the gunslip....and it was plain for all to see....same cylinder including dovetails and arrestor grooves and same breech block / barrel arrangement (apart from, unlike the 634, it didn't have the manual breech latch).

Also, when I got my 634, the two details of the internals that jumped out on this 25mm bore gun were the AA style piston seal and TX stylee synthetic band at rear of piston.

And, taking into account the collaboration re the S200, maybe this could be a reality? But I don't know how old this prototype is. If not recent, it may have been shelved years ago. Could be a much more cost effective way of getting a 25mm break barrel to market without an absolute fortune in development costs, with probably CZ footing most of the bill, or a split venture with shared costs?

[derekj]

Besides everything else Diana currently produce elegant, well engineered break barrel models either spring piston or gas strut coupled with the excellent T06 trigger.

[Geezer]

Besides everything else Diana currently produce elegant, well engineered break barrel models either spring piston or gas strut coupled with the excellent T06 trigger.

Paging barryg.

[Drew451]

Besides everything else Diana currently produce elegant, well engineered break barrel models either spring piston or gas strut coupled with the excellent T06 trigger.

They do but not enough UK customers buy them. This may be changing slowly and Diana are building on formats best suited to UK tastes according to Edgar Bros.
Personally, I think a 34 carbine with a proper moderator, kitted, in a 340 ntec style walnut stock would provide a real alternative to an HW break barrel or any hoped for Air Arms bb.
But how many of you would be prepared to dip a toe into it?

[look no hands]

They do but not enough UK customers buy them. This may be changing slowly and Diana are building on formats best suited to UK tastes according to Edgar Bros.
Personally, I think a 34 carbine with a proper moderator, kitted, in a 340 ntec style walnut stock would provide a real alternative to an HW break barrel or any hoped for Air Arms bb.
But how many of you would be prepared to dip a toe into it?

Like I've said many times in the past, if Diana was to produce a rifle that looked identical to their own 34 120th Anniversary model, then I'd own one as soon as I could afford one, I've already asked Diana to make a replica one but they refused, even though the offer a bespoke customising service.

Pete

[oneseven]

You are speaking purely personally. You may well be prepared to buy one but that doesn't make it a viable business proposition. The market is crowded AND their history with the PE will make them extra cautious.
AA have limited production space and choose to use that in making higher added value PCPs'.
Don't get me wrong-if they made a break barrel I'd certainly look to buy one too but I won't be holding my breath.

Sure, but you'd agree that if they start to hear more demand for a particular gun they will be more likely to produce one. I still think it's a huge gap in their product range, a break barrel should be a staple for them. If people start emailing they might wake up to it.

[Clanchief]

It's possible they could do a run of 100 modded by them from a first company spec. A bit like when SFS bought 50 Longbows from Venom to turn into a SFS Phantom, even back then the run finished at thirty purchased as interest faded, thankfully I have one of the left twenty.

Perhaps AA or a custom tuning house could purchase 100 95's from Hans and re spec them in house and re stock them to a one off run of a tidy spec' d break barrel.

The custom house or AA would still be shelling out 40k for a gamble of what kind of mark up and turn around on your outlay, marketing and investment ?

Perhaps a pipe dream but what about a pay up front bbs boinger special, if you want one sign up and pay up to a custom house 100% of the estimated final cost, they will then source the suggested spec items and assemble to the design spec, only once the final true cost has been established and final payments made would the new one off rifles be able to be owned by the new individual of the collective.

There may be a minimal run that the first supplier Hans could do so maybe 30 to make it worthwhile for the U.K. gunmaker to assemble and turn out, kinda like MG of days gone by.

This may be the only way to see a limited run of a Break Barrel anytime soon.

[Geezer]

I fear it is a pipe dream, however appealing.

Back when springers ruled in the 80s, there were at least a dozen places offering high end custom jobs, varying from just bunging a stock action in a CS stock and making vague claims that they had "tuned" it, to the full-on Venom and Airmasters stuff.

Now, V-Mach is basically Steve Pope. And there's SFS, Wonky, and that's about it. Because the same sort of person who in 1985 wanted a Mastersport 77 now wants a Daystate or a Steyr or an FWB FT rifle.

Worse, a lot of the real tuned springer lovers, many of whom are on here, have worked out that, if you are mechanically handy, you can equal or exceed the custom shop work in your own shed for less money.

We might all say on a thread that we'd buy a new super break barrel, but in practice how many of us in the real world would stump up 500 actual quids for something that is no better than a tuned HW (which we probably own more than one of already)?

[look no hands]

It's possible they could do a run of 100 modded by them from a first company spec. A bit like when SFS bought 50 Longbows from Venom to turn into a SFS Phantom, even back then the run finished at thirty purchased as interest faded, thankfully I have one of the left twenty.

Perhaps AA or a custom tuning house could purchase 100 95's from Hans and re spec them in house and re stock them to a one off run of a tidy spec' d break barrel.

The custom house or AA would still be shelling out 40k for a gamble of what kind of mark up and turn around on your outlay, marketing and investment ?

Perhaps a pipe dream but what about a pay up front bbs boinger special, if you want one sign up and pay up to a custom house 100% of the estimated final cost, they will then source the suggested spec items and assemble to the design spec, only once the final true cost has been established and final payments made would the new one off rifles be able to be owned by the new individual of the collective.

There may be a minimal run that the first supplier Hans could do so maybe 30 to make it worthwhile for the U.K. gunmaker to assemble and turn out, kinda like MG of days gone by.

This may be the only way to see a limited run of a Break Barrel anytime soon.

Well the amount of interest I didn't have when selling my custom HW95 (it's sold now) probably proves that people want other things, when ever anyone puts up a "what rifle" thread, instantly you get HW99 or 95 mentioned by 80% of the replies, so I found it a little strange that there wasn't much more interest in mine considering mine was how a lot of peoples end up like, if you were to add up the total cost of getting my rifle into the tuned and customised state it was in would cost you well over £800 if you bought everything separately (not sure if a custom house could do it for less) now that sold for £270 plus post (£300 posted in the end), now yes I agree with you lot who are shaking their heads in dismay and disgust (I can actually see TonyL pulling his hair out) that I must be a bit bonkers to sell on such a lovely rifle but I have a strange way of doing things, now at the end of the day if AA did a few custom 95's that all it's going to be, it will still be a custom 95 with a fetteling from AA, no different that what V-mach, SFS or Wonky does, now all the tuning info that gets put up on here about short transfer ports and short stroking etc, AA would have to produce a rifle with all of those things perfectly (to not get any criticism from Jon Budd) now if they do that with a bought in 95 then it will still have the same specs as a 95 (unless they really go the full hog and reduce the length of the transfer port and make proper pistons to get the right swept volume but that cost a lot of time and money), what ever gets made needs to be made from scratch with everything designed in on the drawing board.

Pete

[Taz72]

Well the amount of interest I didn't have when selling my custom HW95 (it's sold now) probably proves that people want other things, when ever anyone puts up a "what rifle" thread, instantly you get HW99 or 95 mentioned by 80% of the replies, so I found it a little strange that there wasn't much more interest in mine considering mine was how a lot of peoples end up like

Pete

For what it's worth, I don't think yours was necessarily through lack of interest: I'd have bought it in a heartbeat and saw the ad and your mentioning on the other thread.
I simply didn't have the money to hand because of other expenses over Christmas and the fact that I've had to tone down my airgun purchases lately. No point blowing smoke up a seller's whatsits and replying too say how lovely something is if you're shopping with no money.. .

I suspect that maybe other potential buyers were the same boat.


On the AA break barrel, as mentioned on the thread they have allegedly had a break barrel on the back burner for ages. No great shock there - they make airguns and the break barrel springer is the most obvious and common format of any of them. They already have the manufacturing and purchasing connections in place to do it, so it can only be that they don't see enough money in it at present.

How the prospect of an air rifle manufacturer making a decent variant of the most common format of air rifle can't be viable has me baffled, but then I used to work in the niche side of the car industry at one point, and many times we had similar questions being asked by customers, with "you should do such and such" or "why don't you make a so and so".

But in some circumstances even well regarded, well known companies aren't quite as flush as the marketing blurb would have you believe and if you sink a few thousand quid into getting tooled up and new production, you have to be damn sure that you're going to get a return on it pretty sharpish. The current economic climate is no place to be playing fast and loose with new products that need money throwing at them.

Having said that, they've seen fit to throw out the Ill fated 510TC, and the collectors-only RSN70, so who knows?...