gamo shadow 1000 review

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Average Ratings

Accuracy	8.9/10
Handling	9.3/10
Value for Money	9.5/10
Reviewer Rating	9.1/10
Overall Rating	9/10

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92% Recommended213 out of 231 Reviews

90% Recommended9 out of 10 Reviews

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By markfh11q on 13th Mar 2008

markfh11q's Ratings

Accuracy	7/10
Handling	5/10
Value for money	5/10
Overall value	5/10
markfh11q's recommendation

Good Points

Good sights. Nice barrel. Smooth action.

Bad Points

Hollow stock, (not solid as I was led to believe). Bad alignment of barrel hinge.

General Comments

When you're waiting on the order of weeks for your brand new, exciting spring-air rifle to come in the mail, you don't like to be disappointed.

Unfortunately, this one disappointed me.

There are times when you pick up a piece of equipment so shoddy in it's manufacturing, that you don't even have to shoot it once to tell it's a flop.

The barrel hind on mine was machined so inaccurately, the barrel canted off to the right at about 3 degrees. After a few shots with the rifle, the side of the breech block at the back of the weapon was scraped to bare metal because of the misalignment.

I know there are people who swear by Gamo's quality, and would tell me to just send the rifle back and get a new one, but no. For all of the hype I've gotten from friends and Gamo itself about the quality of their work, they only have ONE chance to provide me with a reason to believe this. The fact that this rifle was so badly out of alignment just turned me off big time. I now use the thing as a "blank" gun, hoping for it to just die someday. I was gonna send it back but decided to keep in in hopes of one day salvaging it.

I will post a few results of my preliminary testing, though.

Although the barrel was off, I was still able to sight the gun in at 10 meters, and practice a bit. I've shot springers before, and knew how to get the most accuracy out of a shot, so I landed a group within 0.5" after it was zeroed. While this is good, my (far) cheaper Powerline 953 can put shots through the same hole at 10 meters, so the accuracy was respectable, but nothing to write home about.

Power is good. And, really, it should be, given the ridiculously heavy recoil of the rifle upon firing. With Beeman ~11 grain pellets, I was able to consistently put rounds through 1/4" plywood, which means it will never see our school's shooting range, because that's all the backstop is.

The stock I didn't like because it was hollow, and not solid composite like higher end models. Only good thing about that was that I could open the back up by removing the recoil pad and hide things in there, but it also removes mass from the rifle, which would help with it's powerful recoil slightly and the accuracy problems associated with this.

I would recommend this rifle to those who are patient enough to be sending back rifles and getting new ones. I am not that kind of person. For all of Gamo's "reputation", I have never had any of these quality problems with either Daisy or Crosman for other airguns.

Total Respect: -1