I have had the pleasuring of shooting 2 older Venom guns just recently. Both are sleeved barrel 77's that started off at .22's and finished after conversion as .177's. One is a sporter and the other a field target gun.
Now the sporter has a aluminium piston, full buttoned, 84mm stroke and is an utter bitch to cock...who ever buys this will have a rifle with a wonderfully fast locktime and a left arm with tennis elbow. As a piece of engineering its wonderful, the engraving on the gun is superb...would I shoot it...not on your life.
Now the second is a field target conversion, has no engraving, comes in a FT stock and again has a sleeved .22 barrel. This one had been abused by someone looking for power, it had 3 tophats smashed into each other in the piston and the spring had 2ft of preload added. When it was stripped just 1 tophat was serviceable so was retained, it shot at 10fpe with just the spring guide for preload but was still a little stiff. The owner asked if I had any other springs to hand so I offered one of the custom wound ones I have to test...the result is a gun that spits out exacts at 10.6fpe and will put a pellet thru a 5mm hole at 50 yards, it can be cocked with one finger.
Now the plane jane FT rifle is not as pretty as the sporter, the engineering is not as involved as it had just a steel piston, but it shot way way better and I could have had the gun just last night for 600quid.
The question though was do they shoot better than the guns I tune for myself...
Nope they don't...so i kept the 600quid in my pocket.
The sporter is sold, i think i know who to also...its nice, but you better get weight lifting and build up those muscles