I previously reviewed my Korean AR-6 air rifle, which I was using with CO2. I believed I was never going to find anything better than it -- how little I could have guessed what was to come!

For a long time I resisted getting any PCP (pre-charged pneumatic) air rifle for a number of reasons. I was already set up with a CO2 tank here, while I had no idea where I could get SCUBA tanks filled. I was browsing the Straight Shooters website when I stumbled across something I simply couldn't resist.

The Tarantula is made by FX Airguns of Sweden. It's a 22-caliber, bolt-action repeater with an 8-shot rotary magazine, pressure gauge, and adjustible power level. These basic facts don't convey how special it is. So, let's go down the list. . .

To adjust power, the stock must be removed -- it's not something to be done casually, but rather one should choose a power level and stick with it. The maximum is supposed to be 30 FPE (foot-pounds of energy). I dialed mine somewhat lower, so that I can get more shots per fill. Mine launches a 15-grain pellet around 800 ft/sec, which still makes it the most powerful air rifle I've yet owned.

The magazine is perhaps the most innovative feature. At first glance it appears similar to the "revolver cylinders" used by my AR-6 rifle, but the operation is fundamentally different. The Tarantula's bolt feeds each round from the magazine into the chamber and seals the breech before firing. There is no jump from the cylinder to the rifling, and there is no air lost at the cylinder gap. The pellets do not require a precise fit in the magazine, and they are held in place by light tension from an O-ring. The rifle came with four of these 8-shot aluminum magazines. The system is very neat and completely superior to that of the AR-6.

This rifle is so much more accurate than my other air rifles, I had a hard time believing it. It may be the most accurate gun of any type that I've ever owned. (Update: I got my 17 Mach IV rifle since writing that!) In addition to its inherent accuracy, the superb stock, balance and trigger all contribute to a "spooky" ability to hit small targets out to 50 yards with ease. It shoots great with just about any pellets, but is especially fond of JSB Exact pellets from the Czech Republic.

This was the first thing that grabbed my attention, and it's the first thing most other people notice too. These lightning-blue stocks were made by RWS in a limited edition for FX. The usual walnut stocks on Tarantula rifles are uncommonly beautiful to begin with, while the one I have is the same pattern made in laminated birch.

Another reason I love this stock is the classical European styling. As I have noted before, most fine air rifles are fitted with chunky semi-target stocks, a trend that I suspect originated in England. Although they are functional, I never warmed to their awkward-seeming appearance. This Tarantula is practically the only modern PCP rifle I've seen fitted with a true sporter-style stock of good quality, including a fitted recoil pad, cut checkering, schnabel forend, palm swell and teardrop cheekpiece. What more could I ask for?

As for the metalwork, the receiver and reservoir are made from non-magnetic alloy which is anodized with a super-slick glossy finish that looks like the blackest and most highly polished blue job in the world. The barrel and muzzle weight are actual blued steel -- pretty well finished as modern blue jobs go, but not highly polished. The trigger guard is cast alloy, while the bolt handle is polished brass.

I still don't have a SCUBA tank. Instead I have the hand pump provided by FX. Although it superficially resembles a common bicycle pump, this operates at far higher pressure. A full charge in the Tarantula is 200 atmospheres. That's 3000 PSI! It takes a lot of pumping to reach that pressure. Fortunately, there is a technique which helps: by flexing my knees and letting my weight depress the handle, rather than trying to do all the work with my arms, it's not that hard. Keep in mind that I am fairly big guy, and this kind of pumping is a bit of workout for me. The hand pump simply won't be an option for some people. Fortunately, FX also offer an electric pump which is more expensive but has garnered an equally good reputation.

The pressure gauge on the bottom of the gun is especially nice. With my CO2 guns, including the AR-6, there was never any good way of predicting when the liquid CO2 in the reservoir might start to run out. With the Tarantula I always have an accurate "fuel gauge" that I can check at a glance. At its current power setting, I can easily get a full four magazines (or 32 shots) before topping up the gun.

This time I broke with my tradition of putting high-dollar scopes on my rifles. It's a Tasco 2-7X32mm AO (Adjustible Objective) airgun scope, which I grabbed from Midway right after Tasco went out of business. I believe BSA now makes a similar scope. This particular scope is surprisingly high quality and is more than adequate for the kind of range this rifle can reach out to. (At one airgun shooting event I was amused to see the high-magnification scopes most people had on their rifles. It didn't make right good sense to me.) The eye relief and the clearance of the bell are so ideal, they make it look like this scope was designed to fit the Tarantula.

Wonderful as the rifle has been, I've had two minor glitches. First, I learned that the bolt has to be operated deliberately and not too quickly. Vigorously slinging the bolt around -- as one would do with a bolt-action firearm -- sometimes causes the magazine to not advance the next pellet. This was bothersome until I learned to move the bolt deliberately, then the failures completely ended.

The other problem I've seen is one in which the gun is left charged with air (as is normal for PCP rifles), but the pressure slowly leaks out over several days. This has happened only a few times. Charging the gun and shooting it has always solved the problem. I suspect the leakage occurs when a minute particle of dust or grit gets caught in the valve. Shooting the gun clears the valve, and it becomes airtight again.

More of a quirk than a real problem, this rifle has a strange safety mechanism. There are two slots the bolt can be dropped into. Putting the bolt into the forward slot makes the gun ready to fire, while the rear slot makes it safe. What's unfortunate is that the safety position doesn't block the trigger, so it's fully possible to forget the safety is set and get a "click" when attempting to shoot. When this happens, the natural response would be to cock the gun and try again -- but that advances a second pellet into the barrel. So, the shooter must remove the magazine to prevent firing two pellets. It's awkward.

I've already made the mistake once of declaring "the ultimate air rifle", so I'm not going to be suckered into that again. It's just barely possible that somebody next year might come up with something even more impressive than the Tarantula -- but I really have to stretch my imagination to figure out how. Bigger caliber? Semi-auto? I just don't know. I expect to be using the Tarantula heavily for many years to come.

Some time after I created this page, I learned that Airguns of Arizona had started selling Tarantula rifles with a barrel shroud, and they could fit the shrouds onto older guns too. So, what is a barrel shroud?

I think of it as a half-baked integral silencer. I call it half-baked because it has no baffles and is rather ineffective at suppressing the gun. The Tarantula, like many pneumatic rifles, has a fairly sharp muzzle crack. This barrel shroud can muffle it down somewhat, while treading lightly around the federal laws that make buying a real silencer such a hassle.

Buying a firearm silencer in the USA, and specifically here in Texas, is possible (I've bought three myself), but the red tape is a nuisance and it can get to be rather expensive. For example, if I were to buy a Gemtech Outback suppressor, which is a popular "muzzle can" for 22 Long Rifle firearms, look what it would cost: about $450 for the silencer, $200 federal tax, $100 transfer fee to the dealer, $50 to have passport photos made (for the Form 4), plus gas money to go pick it up. That's $800+ all together, which means the silencer would cost nearly as much as the rifle! On top of that, the transfer process would require hassling the sheriff to get the forms signed and get myself fingerprinted, plus several months for the whole approval process to work through the BATF.

Of course, there is also some benefit of going this expensive route -- since I would also be able to use the silencer on firearms! That would indeed be cool, but it's not what I was looking for this time.

The next alternative would be to buy a black market silencer shipped over from some country (like England, oddly enough) where they are available without restriction. This is surprisingly easy to do, and they can be had for roughly $50. I once had an opportunity to inspect and test a Webley muzzle can, which threaded right onto a Tarantula's muzzle. It made the gun extremely quiet, eerilly quiet. The loudest sound was the click of the air valve. However, it had some problems. First, it degraded the accuracy of the rifle. The accuracy was still pretty decent, but not as pristine and lovely as it had been before. Worse, the can was so heavy that it caused the barrel to droop and changed the point of impact drastically. It was so drastic, in fact, that the scope's elevation turret couldn't compensate, and it would have been necessary to shim the scope rings before doing any significant shooting. I noted that this silencer was relatively crude in design, and was substantially fatter and heavier than our US-made models (such as the Outback). With all this in mind, the biggest drawback of all was it's dubious legal status. Do you enjoy looking over your shoulder?

Incidentally, there's some question about exactly how illegal these silencers are. US Federal law says nothing about silencing air rifles, it's not forbidden as such. The catch is, these muzzle cans could just as easily be threaded onto a 22 Long Rifle firearm and used as a firearm silencer. The one I examined looked like it would be reasonablly effective in that role. So. . . The BATF takes the position, reasonably enough, that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it has to be taxed like a duck.

The barrel shroud takes a different approach. It's built into the airgun, surrounding almost the entire length of the rifle barrel. Thus, you can't simply take it off and thread it onto a firearm. If you were trying to cobble together a firearm silencer, it would be easier to start with a random piece of metal tubing than try to adapt the barrel shroud from an air rifle. Furthermore, the lack of baffles and the tiny expansion chamber would make it laughably ineffective at suppressing a firearm. Thus, no legal problems. The problem we have, of course, is that it's not all that effective at suppressing the air rifle either. I find it just about cuts the muzzle report in half. The Tarantula still sounds like an air rifle, just a somewhat less powerful one. It makes the gun more pleasant to shoot next to the house, under the carport, any place where surfaces would tend to reflect the noise back at me. The cost was $120 plus $15 return shipping. Unlike the illicit muzzle can, this upgrade had no adverse effect on accuracy. Thus, I judged it to be a good compromise.

The leakage problem has gradually gotten worse over time, and I decided the time had come for an overhaul. Most air rifles need servicing about every five years in my experience, so it was about due. I sent the rifle back to Airguns of Arizona to get the seals replaced, and also to have the barrel shroud taken back off.

But I liked the barrel shroud, didn't I? Yeah, but. . . It was a compromise. It didn't look as good as the original barrel and muzzle weight. The additional length made the gun a bit awkward to handle. Furthermore, as previously noted, it was only semi-effective at reducing the muzzle blast.

Meanwhile, I had gotten a tax-paid firearm silencer for my Ruger 10/22 rifle. It's a muzzle can made from titanium by Jet Suppressors. It's lightweight, it's rust-proof, it's highly effective. It was only natural that I wanted to use it on the Tarantula as well. I just had one minor problem: the FX is threaded for European silencers, but in the USA we use a different thread pitch. While my rifle was away being serviced, I hunted up an adaptor on the internet. This really shows how the internet has changed things, because finding such an obscure item would have been darn near impossible back in the old days.

Now instead of a compromise I have the best of both worlds. With the silencer removed, I have the handy length and sleek looks of the original factory configuration. With the silencer on, the gun is a bit long and awkward looking, but is very, very quiet. A quick test showed excellent accuracy potential with the silencer mounted.

I wrote in my original review that I had a hard time imagining how this gun could be topped. It's been some years now, and some new products have hit the market, but the FX Tarantula has stood up well.

Some of the most appealing newer products come, not surprisingly, from FX. They've got a couple of semi-automatic designs now with 12-shot magazines, the Revolution and the Monsoon. The Monsoon also comes with a much larger barrel shroud which is supposed to be much more effective than the one I tried. However, it does not appear to have any provision for using a muzzle can. Both of these rifles, the Revolution and Monsoon, are far more expensive than my Tarantula, which I thought was pretty darn pricey when I got it. As of today I am seeing retail prices of $1,315 for the Monsoon and $1,645 for the Revolution.

In addition to the high price, I have to say the styling of these new rifles leaves me cold. The Revolution is available only in black plastic with a protruding pistol grip (AR-style) and a bottle-shaped air reservoir that doubles as the buttstock. The Monsoon at least is offered with a walnut stock, but it's a thumbhole design and is rather more chunky than the elegant Tarantula stock. From where I sit, neither of these rifles could replace my Tarantula.

Comments are welcome, as I always love chatting with other gun cranks. You can return to my home page and find my e-mail address there.