Hello everyone, I'm new here and just thought I would share my experience so far with the arakuda max in 22. Been shooting air rifles and have owned several since I was a kid and this is my first PCP.
I ordered the gun from Pyramid Air with the JTS air compressor combo. The first gun I received had serious accuracy issues and I also noticed the regulator was set at 2,200 PSI from the factory, that confused me cuz the manual states that the gun is regulated in 22 at 1800 PSI from the factory, after running across the chronograph and doing my best to adjust the hammer spring I gave up on it ever been acceptably accurate at 25 yards and I just simply returned it and Pyramid Air sent me a replacement, the second gun I received had a crack in the stock right out of the box, again I contacted Pyramid Air they put me in touch with JTS and my first experience in dealing with their customer service was really good, they immediately sent me out a replacement stock. Which I refinished looks much better now!
initially I was pleased with the performance and accuracy of the 2nd gun I recieved, although I did have the issue with the magazines fitting extremely tight marred up the black finish in the breach and on the magazines pretty good until I got that sorted out but then rather quickly I also started to notice that although the regulator was set at 1800 PSI, when I would fill it up to 3200 the regulator would quickly creep up to 2000 PSI. First 10 shots or so would be a bit erratic until it dropped down below 3000 on the main tank and the regulator would drop and hold at 1800. I would get about 15 really accurate shots. Something didn't seem right so again I'm experimenting with hammer spring adjustment but the regulator issue wasn't allowing me to get the consistency I wanted for at least 25 or 30 shots.
I assumed either the regulator was faulty or the seals were leaking a bit. Again I contacted Pyramid Air they told me they could send me a replacement rifle, I was pretty frustrated at this point and convinced another gun would probably just have another problem and I know I should have just returned everything and got my money back. I knew if I tore into the gun and messed around with a regulator I would void the warranty. Being impatient, frustrated and stubborn I made the decision to order a HUMA regulator and swap out the factory one knowing I was going to avoid the warranty on the gun but I was determined to fix it myself... yeah I know I'm an idiot, lol.
I contacted JTS a couple times wanting to get some extra O rings before I tackled this project, I couldn't find anything on their website for OEM parts so I emailed the customer service rep who helped me out with the cracked stock requesting to purchase some extra O-rings and a couple extra piston seals for the compressor...Oh yeah, the Piston seal on the compressor was completely shot after little use, but very easy to replace and they did send an extra one in the kit that I installed but I wanted to have a couple laying around in case this happened again. At this point I could get no response from them, I called Pyramid Air and they gave me a phone number to contact a guy named Travis and I texted him and he responded. I'm not going to go into too much detail about that experience except I will just say that I came to the conclusion rather quickly from that experience that I was on my own now. I went through the schematic of the gun in the manual found the O-ring sizes that I needed went to the O-ring store and ordered what I needed and I'm sure saved a few bucks.
Installation of the aftermarket Huma regulator was very simple although I did have to install a spacer to get the aftermarket regulator to line up like the factory one so the O-rings would be in in their proper position as it sits in the housing.
Got everything back together and I am simply amazed how well this gun performs now. The Huma reg sits firmly at 1800 psi, no creep. And where I was getting if I was lucky 20 accurate shots with the factory regulator being all squirrely I'm now getting 40 to 45 shots @ 870/875 FPS before the Gun starts to drop off the regulator and I have to top it off again. At 25 yards it's damn near hole in hole shots 99% of the time. I'm easily shooting dime-sized groups at 50 yards with jsb18.13.
All that said, I understand it's a entry-level budget PCP and the factory regulators and overall quality control is going to be hit and miss unfortunately, but I managed to get it shooting performing and exceeding my expectations after replacing the regulator, polishing the barrel, smoothing and adjusting the trigger and I learned a heck of a lot.
In my opinion I would stay clear of the compressor... didn't know much about them but after having to already replace the Piston seal on this one and looking at similar ones on Amazon and eBay it kind of looks like they're all the same just package a little different with little gimmick here and there to say one is better than the other, I'm pretty sure the ones that sell for under $300 on Amazon are almost identical and probably made in the same Factory as the $600 JTS branded one... I'm not saying that's the case for sure I have no idea but if I was a betting man
Keep in mind if you pull the trigger on this gun that from my experience and in my opinion it's going to be a little bit of a roll of the dice when it comes to the quality, I probably will not be purchasing any more JTS products anytime soon and I sincerely hope the quality control gets a little better and they have continued success in the future. I'm sure people have gotten them right out of the box with zero issues and have been happy I just was a bit unlucky in that regard, and admittedly my expectations were probably a bit too high for a PCP in this price point. All that said it's a damn good looking gun very fun to shoot, and easy to work on if you have to tackle any issues yourself.
Oh and I did slap on a suppressor and it doesn't clip at all gun is extremely quiet aside from that horrible spring twang
thanks for reading the book I just wrote Guys, I look forward to sharing and learning here.
I ordered the gun from Pyramid Air with the JTS air compressor combo. The first gun I received had serious accuracy issues and I also noticed the regulator was set at 2,200 PSI from the factory, that confused me cuz the manual states that the gun is regulated in 22 at 1800 PSI from the factory, after running across the chronograph and doing my best to adjust the hammer spring I gave up on it ever been acceptably accurate at 25 yards and I just simply returned it and Pyramid Air sent me a replacement, the second gun I received had a crack in the stock right out of the box, again I contacted Pyramid Air they put me in touch with JTS and my first experience in dealing with their customer service was really good, they immediately sent me out a replacement stock. Which I refinished looks much better now!
initially I was pleased with the performance and accuracy of the 2nd gun I recieved, although I did have the issue with the magazines fitting extremely tight marred up the black finish in the breach and on the magazines pretty good until I got that sorted out but then rather quickly I also started to notice that although the regulator was set at 1800 PSI, when I would fill it up to 3200 the regulator would quickly creep up to 2000 PSI. First 10 shots or so would be a bit erratic until it dropped down below 3000 on the main tank and the regulator would drop and hold at 1800. I would get about 15 really accurate shots. Something didn't seem right so again I'm experimenting with hammer spring adjustment but the regulator issue wasn't allowing me to get the consistency I wanted for at least 25 or 30 shots.
I assumed either the regulator was faulty or the seals were leaking a bit. Again I contacted Pyramid Air they told me they could send me a replacement rifle, I was pretty frustrated at this point and convinced another gun would probably just have another problem and I know I should have just returned everything and got my money back. I knew if I tore into the gun and messed around with a regulator I would void the warranty. Being impatient, frustrated and stubborn I made the decision to order a HUMA regulator and swap out the factory one knowing I was going to avoid the warranty on the gun but I was determined to fix it myself... yeah I know I'm an idiot, lol.
I contacted JTS a couple times wanting to get some extra O rings before I tackled this project, I couldn't find anything on their website for OEM parts so I emailed the customer service rep who helped me out with the cracked stock requesting to purchase some extra O-rings and a couple extra piston seals for the compressor...Oh yeah, the Piston seal on the compressor was completely shot after little use, but very easy to replace and they did send an extra one in the kit that I installed but I wanted to have a couple laying around in case this happened again. At this point I could get no response from them, I called Pyramid Air and they gave me a phone number to contact a guy named Travis and I texted him and he responded. I'm not going to go into too much detail about that experience except I will just say that I came to the conclusion rather quickly from that experience that I was on my own now. I went through the schematic of the gun in the manual found the O-ring sizes that I needed went to the O-ring store and ordered what I needed and I'm sure saved a few bucks.
Installation of the aftermarket Huma regulator was very simple although I did have to install a spacer to get the aftermarket regulator to line up like the factory one so the O-rings would be in in their proper position as it sits in the housing.
Got everything back together and I am simply amazed how well this gun performs now. The Huma reg sits firmly at 1800 psi, no creep. And where I was getting if I was lucky 20 accurate shots with the factory regulator being all squirrely I'm now getting 40 to 45 shots @ 870/875 FPS before the Gun starts to drop off the regulator and I have to top it off again. At 25 yards it's damn near hole in hole shots 99% of the time. I'm easily shooting dime-sized groups at 50 yards with jsb18.13.
All that said, I understand it's a entry-level budget PCP and the factory regulators and overall quality control is going to be hit and miss unfortunately, but I managed to get it shooting performing and exceeding my expectations after replacing the regulator, polishing the barrel, smoothing and adjusting the trigger and I learned a heck of a lot.
In my opinion I would stay clear of the compressor... didn't know much about them but after having to already replace the Piston seal on this one and looking at similar ones on Amazon and eBay it kind of looks like they're all the same just package a little different with little gimmick here and there to say one is better than the other, I'm pretty sure the ones that sell for under $300 on Amazon are almost identical and probably made in the same Factory as the $600 JTS branded one... I'm not saying that's the case for sure I have no idea but if I was a betting man
Keep in mind if you pull the trigger on this gun that from my experience and in my opinion it's going to be a little bit of a roll of the dice when it comes to the quality, I probably will not be purchasing any more JTS products anytime soon and I sincerely hope the quality control gets a little better and they have continued success in the future. I'm sure people have gotten them right out of the box with zero issues and have been happy I just was a bit unlucky in that regard, and admittedly my expectations were probably a bit too high for a PCP in this price point. All that said it's a damn good looking gun very fun to shoot, and easy to work on if you have to tackle any issues yourself.
Oh and I did slap on a suppressor and it doesn't clip at all gun is extremely quiet aside from that horrible spring twang
thanks for reading the book I just wrote Guys, I look forward to sharing and learning here. Last edited:
