My experience of four Cometas...

[capt hindsight]

Ive had three Cometa's springers recently and one rammer, but ive kept just one of them. They have good potential, but my experience of their springers out of the box has been pretty dreadful, the quality control where internals are concerned is dire, but that said with a tune and fettle they can be something really special and different.

The importer ASI are spot on, ive dealt with Tony and he has been brilliant to deal with and because of this i'd still recommend considering one. They also come with a lifetime warranty so there is peace of mind but i'd definately buy from a local rfd as all four of the guns have gone back which i'll explain below. If you want one try to see the gun your buying in the flesh before making a final decision, from my experience factor in ease of returning it for repair (wasnt a problem for me with two of the guns as Tony kindly arranged collection from my rfd) or better still throw away the internals and get it tuned from the off. They are not a spanish Weihrauch though, no matter how much they get bigged up on-line.

Cometa 220 .22 (number 1) Shot lovely at first, I bought it as an open sight garden gun. The fibre optic on the end of the moderator is unique and does away with any plastic. But I paid £180 and being honest the gun reminded me of a revamped B2, it was expensive for what it was. Trigger is metal but very dated, ive shot worse but it was very similar to the one on my Relum, other than that all was well, it shot pellet on pellet at 14 yards with the opens, i was pretty impressed. Then it started to diesel, this got worse and worse despite more than a tin of pellets being put through it. Naturally accuracy vanished so I contacted ASI and they sent a replacement no quibble.

Cometa 220 .22 (number 2) This one was worse, at least the first cocked smoothly, this was grinding and dieseling. I was so fed up with it I whipped the spring out and found it was bent like a banana, as was the spring guide. The spring guide was plastic of the cheapest variety and the spring itself seemed overly long for the length of the cylinder, so much so that I struggled to get it back in - weird on a 10ft/lb gun. Again brilliant service from ASI who apologized and issued a refund to my RFD.

Cometa Fusion .177 - Gorgeous stock, a lovely light walnut and adjustable cheek piece. Shot nicely out of the box and really surprised me as inital zeroing session resulted in groups almost as good as any springer ive shot. Im not great with springers but got cloverleaf groups at 30 yards and under 10p coin size groups at 35 yards, not bad for the first session. But alas, my session was cut short as the gun stopped cocking. Phoned Tony and was advised that it sounded like the spring guide had broken, which it had. Again collected from RFD at zero cost and was returned with a new metal spring guide within the week. Unfortunately this metal guide made the gun twang a little, there was no twang originally. After another couple of sessions I got fed up with this and sent the gun away to Welsh Willy for a tune. Its come back very sweet, Willy fettled the cocking shoe and the trigger as well as making a kit for it. It is now without doubt the nicest springer ive shot, the trigger is excellent and reminds me of the Diana unit and the gun cocks with ease, originally it took quite a hard tap to open the breech. The trigger and guard are plastic, but the unit out of the box is far superior to that on the 220, the plastic is glossy and slighty textured, it looks better than i expected. This ones a keeper, it already shoots aswell as my 77K that got too heavy for me to manage. The Fusion is a big long gun, but its light, if i remember correctly I weighed it at 3.4kg, almost a kilo less than the 77. The Fusion is well worth a look imo - but plan on fitting a tuning kit. The price of the gun and the tune came to about the same as taking a bog standard HW95 off the shelf, so i think ive done well with this particular gun.

Cometa USC .25 Rammer - Ordered from Big Dan (others were from my rfd). This looks amazing with the grey laminate stock, trigger was similar to that on the Fusion, so perfectly acceptable to me. It was almost as though this gun had come out of a different factory, its modern and seems well made. Only problem I had was a cluncking noise occured, so had to post back to Big Dan. Turned out part the silencer section had come loose as its made up of two parts, the silencer is bonded on so no it easy to get apart. Only gripe with this was on this occasion I had to pay courier costs there and back, costing £35. Dan tested the gun while he had it and sent me a couple of nice videos of it shooting well at 30 yards, he also chronographed the gun prior to originally sending it out, so I sucked up the courier fees as he clearly puts the extra time in for his customers. Got to admit I struggled to shoot this gun well, I knew it was a gamble when I bought it, Ultra short carbine, .25 calibre and a rammer - why could it be difficult to shoot? It was bought for close range Grey squirrel control but ive ended up re-zeroing my .22 BPK and using really heavy .22 pellets instead, so this gun was sold on here to a member who is experienced with both .25 calibre and rammers. Lovely gun but one for experienced hands and was surplus to my requirements, but i'll admit I was very tempted to keep hold of it.

Hope this helps anyone considering a Cometa, would I recommend one? Well not a 220, but the others yes, provided the buyer knows they may need some repair work, a tune or some fettling. My experience of ASI was great customer service and a genuine desire to put things right, but i did get fed up of making 90 minute round trips to my RFD and packaging up guns.

Ed

[Pumper]

I have the Fenix 400, older model with the long barrel. I find it well built and accurate enough but I hardly use it nowadays as it's built like a tank, nice but heavy Nick