Brocock Concept Super Six .22
Hello all, this is my first review of an air rifle on here so I'll try my best to explain in detail about my Brocock Concept Super Six .22.
First of, the rifle came in a rather modest looking plain white box with Brocock printed in large letters in their usual lettering and also with 'Designed & Manufactured In England' proudly printed on the side. On opening the box I found a great deal of padding, a large peice of thick jagged form layered across the bottom with the rifle on top and a thin layer of felt over the rifle, so lots of padding & lots of protection. If you don't have a gun bag, gun case or even a gun safe, you could easily store this rifle in its orginal packaging when not in use & not worry about it being accidently dropped etc - stored in a safe, secure place too of course. The manual is very easy to follow and an adapter is also included.
Out of the box, when first handled the rifle certainly feels like a quality product & it can't be ignored that someone has very much put a lot of effort in producing this rifle and it must be pointed out that this Concept Super Six was actually made to order so if you want one you might have to wait a little while for it, I waited a little over a week but it was well worth it. However I'm not sure how much of the rifle was already ready to be put together so you might have to wait a bit longer.
The sporter stock of the Concept Super Six is made of walnut and what a lovely peice it is too & is ambidextrous. The pistol like grip has very nice palm swells on either side with two thumb groves laying parallel to each other for when or if you wish to shoot in the 'thumbs up' position. The chequering on the pistol style grip and on the fore end grip panels is millimetre perfect that has a slightly rough but pleasant feel to them with Brocock engraved on the bottom of the grip which gives it a rather nice touch. The cheek rest is of medium height and features two nicely placed lines curving around and blending into the butt just a few inches shy of the grip while at the rear of the butt, you have an adjustable butt-pad that can be simply adjusted to move up or down giving precision eye/scope alignment.
The action of the Super Six is, like the stock, simple, basic lines through out, basically no-nonsense here, however there are some very good looking shades of black on the action that don't match the colour of the barrel, cylinder, spacer, trigger and trigger guard - there must be every shade of black used here and it really makes the rifle stand out and I like it a lot. The bluing on the barrel and cylinder looks stunning and it actualy looks wet and is fitted with nicely machined end caps, but you'll need an silencer adaptor if you want to fit a silencer and to be honest you need one because the muzzle crack is rather loud. I'm thinking on buying myself a Parker Hale to fit to it, and an adaptor too of course. While on the subject of the barrel, there was a few reviews done in the past about the Concept stating that the barrels were from Loather Walther and later BSA, I can confirm that the barrel on my Super Six, and other Brocock models too for that matter, are neither of those but are actually from Weihrauch.
The metal trigger is of a simple, straighforward yet totally suitable of a design and is adjustable for first stage travel and weight of pull & is finished in matte black where as earlier single shot Concepts were made of brass. I believe the trigger guard on earlier single shot Concepts were plastic, not 100% sure, but this one is metal and like the trigger is finished off in matte black.
The stainless steel side bolt of the Super Six is a totally different design to what I had seen on previous models which had the traditional looking bolt with a ball on the end, this is a very different design. It is difficult to describe so I'll try my best in doing so. It is quite thick & chunky which looks to have a "double ball" about a little over an inch apart from end to end that are joined/blended with an inner curve yet straight piece that also has five grooves which are nice & grippy, then theres a piece about an half inch long connected to the black metal bolt that fitted inside the action. I must admit that when I first noticed that it had this bolt I felt a little dissapointed, I was expecting the traditional looking one, however after spending some time with the rifle it has very quickly grown on me over a short period of time, it has a very nice feel to it and is beautifully machined piece of metal that gives the Brocock Concept's old sniper rifle kind of style a slightly futuristic look. Given the choice now it'd have to be this new looking side bolt.
On operation the bolt felt slightly stiff but thats just with it being fresh from the factory, with use it is becoming silky smooth with a healthy sounding 'click-clunk-click, click-clunk-click'. It has two keeper slots, one for when rifle is loaded or keeping the push rod in the breech after when you're done using it and another slot for when you're loading and unloading the magazine.
The aluminium magazine holds six .22 pellets and has a synthetic pellet-retaining band around it's perimeter. The very first image I seen of the Super Six had a bright Ferrari red coloured mag, other colours were mentioned to have been tested were blue and green. The last review(s) I read of this rifle, they were featured with polished aluminium mags and it was stated that future Concept Super Six's mags would possibly be anodized black. However, the mag on my rifle is of a rusty/brown colour & I must say it suits the rifle rather well. It is about the diameter of a £1 coin and is very easy to take out of the & put into the action. As well as being yet another simple feature of the Concept, it is totally fool proof & is impossible to place in rifle the wrong way round. It has two small ball bearings of different sizes, the bigger one at the rear of the mag and a smaller one at the front, its just a matter of clicking it into place & there you go. Although most people will remove the mag to laod it with pellets, however it is possible, if a little fiddly, to load pellets while the mag is placed into the rifle. But I'd just rather remove it completely.
Fitted with a Nikko Stirling 4-12X50 AO MountMaster, the Super Six handles fantastic, it comes to the shoulder swiftly and while shouldered it is very easy to operate the side bolt. Being at a height of 5'11" with fairly big hands with piano fingers and a slim build, I'm finding the Concept Super Six easy to operate when standing, sitting and in the prone position - with the rifle unloaded I've been holding the rifle in various positions to just get the feel of it and as I say I'm finding it easy and to be quite honest, I don't understand some reviews of both Concept types in one particular air gun magazine...On a couple of occasions it was criticised for being too light weight and the barrel being too thin and could be prone to damage if dropped...Well from what I can tell the barrel is as solid as you'd like it to be despite being only a 10 or 11mm and it being a Weihrauch, well, the name says it all & besides - don't drop it then. They obviously missed the 'lightweight hunter rifle' part.
Anyway...
As of yet, I'm unable to test the Super Six's accuracy at further distances due to bad weather but I have tested it at slightly over 20 yards. I placed the rifle on a secure, solid bench via a little wooden stool, with this the rifle didn't move a millimetre and I wanted to test its own accuracy potential and not mine as a person. With the Super Six zeroed in, I put a full mag of six pellets through the same hole at 10 yards, another six through the same hole at 15 yards and the same at slightly over 20 yards, but about eleven shots fired at the latter - although 2-3 were slightly off but that was own fault. All I can say is ruddy impressive!!! Then just I got ready to test it at further distances, enter the weather with heavy rain & besides it was getting too dark to do any more, apart from the weather I was left grinning from ear to ear.
During that short but sweet test session, I must have fired the rifle about, must be a good few over 50 times with pellets during zeroing and shooting targets plus a few dry firings in a safe environment just to make sure all was working well at first, this from a full charge of 200 bar. When it came to filling it back up, I used an FX 3 stage stirrup pump (I bought this with the rifle, great bit of kit) & topped the rifle back up to its recommended fill pressure, it took a handful of strokes but I took my time with it, I just slowly filled it up without any effort. Now I'm just waiting for the weather to be good so I can do some more testing.
Overall, I love this rifle to bits & I believe its well worth the money, £425. If you want a no-nonsense multi-shot rifle, this is it. It shoots great, feels nice, handles great and looks quite stunning despite its modest looks. There is one or two things that might be of concern to some people, the first being the muzzle, at 10mm you'll need to fit an adaptor so you can use a silencer with an 1/2" thread. The other being a safety catch, this rifle does not have so extra care is needed. I understand that Brocock greatly disapprove of safety catches as they believe they take away dicipline of the shooter. However, the Super Six does have a sort of safety, simply pull back the bolt and place it into the rear keeper slot then when you're 100% sure you're going to shoot live, push the bolt forward placing a pellet in the breech with the bolt in it's forward keeper slot. I understand them and they do have a point in a way, it all comes down to common sense in the end and where theres common sense theres a same, controlled environment.
I hope this review isn't too long winded to read & I hope its of interest. Like I say I need to do a few more shooting/test sessions (which reminds me, need a chrono) and I'll post some results and I'll try & get some pics up aswell.
If theres any questions you'd like to ask, please don't hesitate to do so.
Kind regards
'It's possible. The point is getting away with it. And speaking as a professional, that's a very important consideration.'