ok heres the thing. im on a team and ive been playing speedball for bout a year. My dad just got into paintball. Hes looking into a new barrel but naturally he has no idea what he is doing so im looking for him.

He wants longer distance on his shots and i know the only way to do that is with an apex or a flatline (we dont like the flatline)

We also dont like the way the apex is cheap as in it can curve around bunkers.

so heres the question:

If he gets an apex is it easy to just put it on flatline mode and then not mess with it at all?

The flatline has no "modes"  Once you get it on (which isn't a simple unscrew/screw in procedure), it's on.

The Apex has 8-click "ramp" that allows you to adjust backspin.  From either nothing (normal barrel) to what people seem to call "Super flatline" which apparently has greater range than a flatline barrel.

diedonimpact wrote: im sry i meant to say apex not flatline

I own an Apex and a Flatline and have played speedball extensively with both. The Flatline is finicky about the quality of paint but there are suitable inexpensive paints that work fairly well.(Diablo worked well in mine at half the price of Marbs or All Star). Every time you remove the Flatline for cleaning it or open the marker, the barrel has to be "set up" again. Nothing hard to do, it just needs attention paid to the details.

On the other hand, the Apex can be adjusted to shoot just how you want it to 10 seconds before the game starts. It is not finicky about paint even shooting some very poor quality paint very well. It can be a little rough on tournament paint...the fragile stuff tends to break if you have the spin set to the max.

You rotate the mechanism with the click slide on the top and run it to about the mid point of its range. On mine this gives me virtually identical performance to the Flatline. A little fine tuning to get the flat trajectory and position things so there is no left or right curve to the flight path and you are good to go. You can do this while you play...again, it takes only a few seconds. I have used the left, right and dive bomb settings in only a couple of games. Fun and easy to adjust your play to take advantage of its capability, but I use it mostly in the "Flatline" mode.

I find it more accurate at any distance than my Flatline. That is not to say that I found the Flatline inaccurate. It was excellent, but persnickety. Any paint or moisture in the barrel caused wild shots. Over time, residue rubbing off the paint caused the shots to go wild...requiring barrel removal and a wash with hot water and dish detergent.

The Apex requires none of that effort. Pull the barrel after a day of play. Rinse the Apex mechanism with warm water, shake out the water any you are ready to play all day again.

The Apex overcomes the limitations of the Flatline. It is not made cheaply, it is an evolution of the Flatline concept done the way it needed to be to work. I have found it rugged and if you do happen to break it, from what I have seen so far, BT replaces it under warranty.