The aimrite was my second gun after the biller, and it was a world of difference. It took a second to learn to chest load the gun and also loading and rigging the open muzzle took a bit getting used to, but once I was used to it, it was awesome. It could penetrate fish at such a longer distance then biller, I loved it. But then the handle broke, so I sent it back to Hawaii to be fixed. Aimrite has a <i>no questions asked</i> lifetime warrantee which is awesome.

Shortly later I was sent back a brand new aimrite venom: the new handle is awesome, solid and comfortable for loading. But two things were different: the rail on the barrel was shallower and instead of using a shark fin tabbed shaft where the line connects on top of the shaft outside of the trigger mech, this gun took a Rob Allen shaft. Now I think personally having the line connect on top of the shaft outside the trigger mech has a lot of advantages, such as it’s impossible to misload the gun with the line in the wrong place. When the line connects to the rear of the gun, it is very possible to accidentally get the line under the shaft while loading. I don’t care how awesome a spearo you are, in the heat of action it’s still possible to not pay attention and load the shaft with the line underneath.

Now the other issue I have with line attaching to the rear of the spear and entering the handle is this. If the line is too thick or not rigged “right” it will bounce the shaft out of the trigger when loading. I have seen this issue to varying degrees in the Rob Allen, Aimrite and Rabitech guns. When you first crimp a shooting line to a shaft, it wants to make a circle, given time the mono kinks into a more tear dropped shape. If this circle is too big, the shaft won’t enter the trigger properly, the shaft will slide down the rail and then bounce out of alignment. You can’t crimp the shot line in a tiny circle to avoid this because then it won’t fit into the the trigger at all.

I’ll try to post a photo of this.

Anyways the aimrite is an awesome gun, but I think it would be better with a shaft where the line doesn’t connect to the rear of the shaft. Or maybe really light shooting line would make the difference. Most others who use the gun don’t seem to have this problem, so it could just be user error.

I also had a problem with the Rob Allen finned shaft tearing up the rail on the venom. I had purchased the finned shaft assuming it was similar to the Riffe and original Aimrite shaft but it’s not. The line still connects to the rear of the shaft. In my case my bands weren’t totally even so the shaft would spin throwing the tiny fins into the rail on the stock. In time this chewed up the rail. It’s pretty much all my fault this happened and aimrite sent me a BRAND new super venom gun to replace it .

I got that AB Biller on suggestion of my neighbor as good a beginner spear gun. My girlfriend refers to the AB biller style spear gun as the AK-47 of spearguns, cheap , reliable, plentiful, powerful but not that accurate (at long ranges). I would agree to some degree with her. The Biller style guns are popular with scuba divers, because they are hip loaders, and are excellent for free shafting and they are “old school”. A lot of scuba divers are “old school’ too, and have probably been using these style guns for years with great success, so for them I think “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” would apply. This gun and trigger style has been around for many years, and its is rare to hear of them breaking or not functioning properly. Another good thing about these guns is they are cheap and it’s easy to change the size. All you need is a shaft and piece of wood to replace the stock, both of which are sold relatively inexpensively by Ray Odor.

For free diving though I don’t think these guns are ideal, for one the out of the box rigging for line shafting these guns involves a slide ring on the shaft. So essentially as the spear is fired it must slide through this ring which eats up its forward motion. This slide ring coupled with the heavy shaft billers shoot and the wood track the spear slides on make for not a lot of range. You can use a lot of rubber to offset this but its still inefficient. Try shooting a biller with one 5/8 band compared to a rail gun with one 5/8 band and there is world of difference. Of course on the upside with the heavy shaft if something is in range, it demolishes it.

It’s also not really cheap, I mean it is cheap compared to riffe or a custom wood gun, but you can actually get a euro or railgun for the same or less then a biller gun.