Eclipse ETek Ego

PGi Magazine

Since its release, Planet Eclipse's Ego has carved a very impressive niche into tournament paintball for itself, gobbling up gun hungry teams and winning a few tournaments along the way. In 2006 alone, the Ego has won NPPL, PSP and now even NXL titles, with more teams making the switch along the way. With a myriad of electronic features, simple maintenance, low weight, good looks and top quality build, perhaps the only downfall of the Ego to date is its double-take price tag, anywhere from just over a thousand dollars to nearly two grand depending on the model, keeping it out of reach of many players who would assuredly love to put the hammer down with one. Just before the 2006 PSP Chicago Open, word of a new model leaked out of Planet Eclipse and quickly became a deluge announcing the coming release of an all new Ego model, the ETek. Packed with many of the features from the current Ego but a price tag sitting near the eight hundred dollar point, Planet Eclipse aims to pull value-minded players into the Ego family with a mix of performance, quality and unprecedented affordability.

It didn't take much barking up the Planet Eclipse tree for me to hear all about the finer points of the “son of Ego” from some proud parents like Jacko, Gerry Bates and Nicky Truter, who were kind enough to show me around the ETek while in Chicago . Handling and even looking practically identical to an Ego though with smoother, more basic milling on the receiver, the question that was apparently asked at Planet was not “how do we make a cheap tournament paintball gun that looks nice” but rather “how do we make a less expensive Ego without making a cheaper Ego?” Holding the ETek makes it clear; Eclipse answered that question correctly.

All aluminum with the same solid, quality feel of its kinfolk, the ETek is well constructed and packs all the necessary gear to get any player from one end of the field to the other, right out of the box. In common with its big brothers, the ETek is standard with a clamping feed neck, high and low pressure regulators, a dovetailed .45 grip frame with the same on/off bottle adapter found on the SL66 Ego and runs off a nine-volt battery. A Delrin bolt with a metal quick-pull pin, wide trigger guard, numerous standard firing modes and double trigger are also standard equipment. Like any other Ego and most other modern high-end paintguns, the ETek accepts Autococker-threaded barrels. Running at approximately 300psi, the ETek's low pressure operation and anti-chop eyes (with Ego6 eye covers) go a long way towards preventing chopped and broken paintballs. According to Eclipse, bolts, eye covers and feed necks are interchangeable with upgraded types already on the market.

What separates the ETek from its higher priced brethren like the Ego6, SL66 or Dark Ego are several internal and functional changes designed to simplify its design while still allowing the user to make it go bang the way they want it to. Replacing the liquid crystal readout of the Ego are the flashing lights of an LCD display blinking in various colors through the letters “E, G and O” with settings such as firing mode adjusted with trigger pulls. A legend explaining what the various colors mean is included inside the grip, with a more detailed set of instructions available in the outstanding ETek owner's manual, something else Eclipse is better at making than most. Speaking of the trigger, gone is the Ego's optical, magnetic trigger, replaced instead with a more traditional spring and micro switch that may not be as crisp or space age as the Ego's, but still provides a smooth, soft pull.

Gone also are the Ego rammer's Quick Exhaust Valves (QEV's) that improve cyclic rate of fire, replaced instead with basic barbs that, according to Eclipse technicians, will likely lower the ETek's rate of fire from the Ego's twenty-five shots per second to something closer to twenty. As the NPPL swears it's a semiautomatic-only league and the PSP and CFOA limit their rates of fire to just above fifteen balls per second, this loss isn't exactly a death blow. In addition, for simplicity's sake the route incoming air takes to go from the inline regulator to various internal parts of the ETek is different than that taken by air moving through the Ego6, creating a very critical o-ring near the front LPR assembly that prevents the high and low pressure air from mixing. As maintenance of the ETek is as simple as that of the Ego, ensuring consistent function is as simple as keeping o-rings oiled and the gun clean.

Picking up the ETek for the first time, I was impressed with how light it was. As it turns out, this had a great deal to do with the fact that it weighs the same as an Ego6, sitting at around seven pounds with a 68 cubic inch, 4,500psi Crossfire air bottle attached and a full Viewloader VLocity hopper sitting on top. Though the ETek is a stacked tube design, with the bolt riding in a tube above the rammer, the overall height of the game-ready package wasn't terrible, even when used with a VLocity with a fully intact feed neck. The gun's grips, the same as those sent with the Ego6, are comfortable enough for players with small hands and even players with the meatiest digits will find plenty of room for walking inside the trigger guard. 4,500psi and a pod of Draxxus paintballs later, the tire kicking was over and it was time for a test drive.

Switching the ETek on is a simple process, involving pushing the top button at the rear of the grip frame then allowing a little Studio 54 disco light action to happen just beneath. The ETek's eyes switch on automatically, requiring the user to simply twist their air on and drop some bullets in before stepping inside the net. Measured with a venerable red radar chronograph, velocity for the first few shots with the ETek sat at between 285 feet per second and 290, right where it needed to be. When necessary, velocity adjustment is accomplished at the bottom of the inline regulator with a 1/8 inch Allen wrench. While I didn't expect much from the “not quite a one-piece Shaft” stock barrel, I was very pleasantly surprised, as it kept one splat on top of another at twenty-five feet and held tight groups out to well past fifty, all in relative quiet thanks to rows of inline porting and a few more holes drilled near the muzzle. While most players will elect to add an aftermarket barrel of one brand or another to their ETek, those with just enough money to purchase one can rest assured that replacing the barrel might be the cool thing to do, but will not be necessary in order to shoot straight.

While the Ego's trigger pull, thanks to its magnetic return and optical sensor is a bit faster and crisper than that of the ETek, I was easily able to hammer rates of fire into the double digits with it. Once I switched the ETek into a PSP-legal mode one ramp, rate of fire became a mute point and streams of paint were pounding downrange efficiently, relatively quietly and with very little recoil, impressing everyone that had come over to gawk at the new hotness. Impressively, I did not chop or break a single paintball at any time during testing, even when running a hopper dry, with the vast majority of the paintballs fired coming out one behind the other in long strings. With a 45 cubic inch air system, the light, efficient and small ETek would be an X-Ball or snake player's dream, while mid and back players in seven-man competition will be able to shoot plenty of pods on a 68 system.

Quality, easy to maintain and proven capable of winning gold at the very highest levels of play in any format, the Ego has earned a following from the professional scene down to the local level. While it may not be available in as many colors, posses as intricate a milling pattern or have a little screen on the back of its grip frame, the ETek, for most intents and purposes, matches the impressive Ego6 where it counts most, on the field. For players on a budget who desire the mix of reliability and performance that continue to put the Ego at the top of the podium, the ETek opens the doors to Planet Eclipse.