As you can see from the picture above, there's not a whole lot to the new Shocker 03. In our opinion, that's a good thing. Fewer things to break that way! A quick rundown on what everything does, how it works, and what we think of it:

A single solenoid powers the OPEN bolt Shocker. The air fires from the bolt after the small holes in the bolt pass the end of the bolt shaft. Simple. The solenoid blows the bolt forward and back. The gun works on about 190psi. We may be able to knock that down a bit as we mess with the Shocker some.

There are 4 parts to the internals. The bolt, bolt guide, fire chamber, and the bolt sleeve. Everything but the bolt (which is Delrin) is made of aluminum. They all slide out the back by turning the bolt shaft out with an allen wrench. They can be pretty hard to remove quickly however as the fit is very tight.

The board is split into two halves. This is so everything can fit into the incredibly small Shocker. The top board attached to the solenoid houses the on/off switch, the blue LED light, the Vision connector, and the solenoid connection. The board is soldered directly to the solenoid. NO MORE BROKEN WIRES! The lower board in the grip frame houses the cricket speaker, the dwell/bps switches, the 9 volt battery connector, the micro switch, and all the other junk that make the Shocker work. The dwell can be adjusted up and down with the two small gray push buttons on the board. These same buttons, with the trigger depressed, turn the ROF up and down. The new Shocker 03 is supposed to fire 20 bps at it's highest setting.

The trigger uses magnets in stead of springs for the return. We are NOT fans of magnetic triggers but we do have to say that Smart Parts did a great job of getting this one to feel just right. The trigger can be adjusted for pre and post travel and length to the switch. All from outside the gun! The trigger feel is very nice and walking it is a snap. You can also tune the magnetic return pressure if you feel like getting deep into your Shocker's guts. It's a bit more complicated than simply turning a screw somewhere as you have to take the lower board out of the frame.

Ball detents come stock on the new Shocker 03 with one side being a short version, and the other a long. There's a slot on the side of the gun for the vision eye and it's wires to go. The vision system is completely internal with NO externally visible parts. Even the wire is routed up inside the body and out of sight. We believe the vision system will be a very important part of ANY Shocker. It fires so fast that you will cut balls in half. Even if you have a force feeder like a Halo or an Ego you may sometimes out shoot your loader and chop balls.

The ball detents and the feed tube use the same thread as the Impulse so there are already some aftermarket accessories out there for this new Shocker. In the picture you see a New DeSIGNZ No rise Halo feed tube installed. The barrel threads are the same as the old Shocker Sports.

My impressions after playing with it for two tournaments and several practices? It's the best gun I've ever shot. Period. But it's not perfect. While the new Shocker 03 is very easy to take apart because there are so few parts, those parts can be hard to get out of the gun. In order to get the guts out, you must remove the bolt guide and use that to push the bolt and the blot sleeve out. To remove the fire chamber only a long strong finger is required, but it can be a pain in the butt trying to hook the back of it with your finger tip, and pull it out. When removing the grip frame (though you really shouldn't) be VERY careful of the on/off switch and the super thin wire harness that hooks everything up. It's extremely easy to pinch the wires in half, break the button part of the switch or just generally misalign things. We've broken both the switch and the harness already! If you tinker with this gun too much, you WILL break something. The Shocker 03 weighs next to nothing which is fantastic, but at a price. The price is the side walls of the body are very thin and could get crushed if you're not careful. How does it shoot? Holy Shiznit Batman. Straight, smooth, flat, fast. It's damn near perfect. But again, at a cost. The Shocker sucks air like a 50 year old smoker hanging a flag in the last 5 seconds of a game. In our informal tests we got about 600 shots from a 68/4500. When we get some more solid numbers we will post them here. We are planning on doing some more tinkering with things like the dwell, FPS and secrety kinds of stuff. One last complaint that may get me in trouble, but oh well, of the three pre-production Shockers we got in, only ONE worked without a hitch. The other two we had to "fix" some things that didn't work straight from Smart Parts. If you know Smart Parts, you know that's nothing new.

After having said all that I want to re-emphasize my original opinion, the new Shocker is the best marker I've ever shot. It has the accuracey, the speed, and weight, to make it THE gun to shoot.

John Young