AEA or JTS vs JSB and H&N

If your guns shoot JSBs sufficiently accurately for you, that is great. Most of mine do not. They prefer H&Ns. JSBs in my experience are not very consistent in weight but they still shoot great in two of my PCPs. I've shot a few, but only a few JTS pellets and my guns didn't like them much. But yours might. You have to let your gun tell you what it prefers.

I wouldn't get obsessed with brand names, buy some to test and then get larger amounts of whatever performs best.

AEA .. is putting JSB to shame .. way more consistent in weight so far .. harder aloy means no bend skirts .. shooting great in many guns ..

I’ve been using a lot of JTS pellets, .22 in 22.07g and 25.4g. They shoot well, arrive undamaged and are much closer in weight. The JTS also foul my barrel quicker, and I pull more lead out on cleaning, much more than with the JSB. I much prefer the softer lead of the JSB, but the MRD’s have soured me a bit.

I always wonder... Many shooters say that people worry about a bent skirt, but with the force of the Air behind it will usually straighten the skirt out. But with harder lead pellets will it still do that? Crosman uses a harder lead from what I have researched, could that be the reason for more "Fliers" because of the harder lead?

Hello @rangur1
Does your buddy have the same rifle as you, set-up in a similar fashion?
If no, you are comparing apples to oranges . Just because it shoots better out of one rifle doesn't mean it shoots well in yours' or another.
You say that you are not a bench or FT shooter, then don't change anything.
You would have been fine without knowing about a newer pellet. You still would have done your pesting and plinking and had fun.
If you want to re-tune your rifle to shoot another pellet brand - they will not shoot the same at the same settings - Go for it and have fun!
If you do not like tuning or messing with your current set-up .. i'd just keep doing what you have been doing.

mercado said:

AEA .. is putting JSB to shame .. way more consistent in weight so far .. harder aloy means no bend skirts .. shooting great in many guns ..

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I agree and disagree.

I agree that AEA and JTS are way more consistent. But to be honest so are H&N. Why do so many people use JSB over H&N (before the China players came out) - because it's a softer lead alloy and shoots better in most barrels. Biggest complaint against H&N - their lead alloy is too hard and their pellets don't shoot great out of many airguns.

Aside from the AEA and JTS being a harder alloy, more consistent weight, and just the new kid on the block I've had mixed results.

In .22 25.4gr the AEA and JTS shot just as consistently as JSB @ 50 yards. But taking it out to 100 yards and the AEA and JTS fell apart. 3-4" groups @ 100 versus 1.5" or less with the JSB.

In .25 the AEA 34gr weren't so good, but the AEA 29.5gr appear very good at 100 yards. JTS were just okay.

In .30 the AEA 45gr blew away the JTS @ 100 yards and were a little better than the JSB.

Note the above are all in my guns, my barrels, whatever fps I was shooting at. Different guns, barrels, fps, etc and results could be mind bendingly different.

mercado said:

AEA .. is putting JSB to shame .. way more consistent in weight so far .. harder aloy means no bend skirts .. shooting great in many guns ..

Click to expand...

100% agree .

JSB used to produce high quality pellets. These days, it's luck of the draw to get a good tin. I hope more competition nudges JSB back on course to produce pellets like 10/15 years ago.
H&N pellets like the 18gr Baracuda's performed pretty decently out of my M3 last year, maybe I should take another look at those. For some reason I forgot about them.
At this point (half a tin of JTS 18gr pellets in) I don't see where the JTS hype comes from. They sometimes produce amazing groups, to be followed up by a bad case of horizontal stringing. It seems they, out of my gun, get thrown off by the slightest breeze.

When the H&N 18.1gr pellets first came out, I bought 10 tins. Upon arrival, I opened two tins and weighed them. Out of those two tins, the weights were very consistent, having only 10% not within .1gr. Compared to other brand pellets that I had weighed, this was actually remarkable.
Now that was directly after they started manufacturing those pellets. I have not tried any recently and wonder about any wear and tear on the machines making them less consistent?
I have always had good results using H&N pellets, although I still shoot many .22 caliber FX 25.4gr pellets (JSB clones?) with great results.

Mike

I shoot H&N 22 caliber 18 grain pellets in my Caiman X. They shoot noticably better than any JSB pellet I tried in it (which included the JSB 18 grain and 25 grain). The H&N 18 grain also shoot significantly better in my Caiman than the H&N 21 grain "match" pellets my P35-22 prefers. I know of no way to find this out other than shooting the gun.

I agree Crosman and H&N pellets seem to be a little harder than JSBs but I think we often make too much of a pretty small difference. When I shoot them into wet paper and harder materials all the pellets distort. The domed pellets still look like domed pellets but they are shorter and wider than they started out when I shoot them into wet paper. The lead alloy may affect how the rifles barrel accepts the different pellets and I've seen people indicate they think CZ barrels normally prefer the "harder" H&N pellets. That seems to be true in my case. But I've also seen it expressed that barrels made in China also prefer the harder pellets and that is true for two of my P35s but not for the third or my Avenger. So I don't know if those theories are right often enough to be useful.

I would like to know in advance what pellet my gun is going to like so I didn't have to try so many pellets in them. I'm getting enough partial tins that I have less of a problem doing the testing than I did at first. But it still would be useful if there was some way to know. But I do not think there is a way. We just have to get some and try them. I test JSBs and H&Ns in a weight that my gun will shoot them 900 fps or less at least originally. Sometimes I retune and retest. I test other brands occasionally and less completely. But I don't have any guns that preferred any of the pellets made by other suppliers that I tested.

JSB has been my go to ammo for 20+ years . For targets or hunting they always preformed well . I could get some nice groups but not with the consistency I wanted. Good but not great . Always blamed the unsorted, straight from the tin constancy.

H&N has never been as good but the 21g Baracudas work well in the Mav and Vet1 and my HW95 likes the 14.3 field target ammo all in .22 cal.

The first time I tried JTS I was super happy with the accuracy. First try with the 22.07s in the Vet1 I shot my best ever 30y challenge with a 197 . The 18g and 25.4s both did excellent at 50y in the Mav and Vet1 . They really showed the accuracy both pcps are capable of .

Then I tried the AEA 18s and 25.3s . The Maverick was absolutely shooting its best groups ever with the 25.3s . My tune and ammo will not change on the Mav for a while. The Vet1 loves the 18g as far as accuracy.

Proof is in the pudding. At 50y with the Mav and AEA 25.3s . With my bipod in the wrong place an wobbly table and rear squeeze bag . oh and a $125 West Hunter 6-24 at 20x .

I’ve read about JSB quality dropping, but nobody told my guns. They and H&N are still the easy button for most of my guns. I grabbed three tins of different styles of JTS to try, and they seem to be the easy button for doubling my group size! I noticed that between the large head diameter and evidently harder alloy, they tend to skew when pushing them into a springer barrel until the skirt forces them straight. Guessing lack of seating consistency translates to the larger groups, but I haven’t come up with a good way to control or test that theory just yet.

I did a test on another thread JSB vs AEA, one mag of each, same gun 30 yards, Maverick Compact. The AEA's nudged out the JSBs, when I say nudged they were just slightly more accurate, no weighing, no cleaning, just shooting. I've got some JTS's coming in I'm going to repeat the test just for giggles. As a note was shooting today the AEA's were all over the place, scrubbed the barrel, and used some bees wax on a patch, things tighten right back to where they were. I hate cleaning barrels more than every few months.

ctshooter said:

I agree and disagree.

I agree that AEA and JTS are way more consistent. But to be honest so are H&N. Why do so many people use JSB over H&N (before the China players came out) - because it's a softer lead alloy and shoots better in most barrels. Biggest complaint against H&N - their lead alloy is too hard and their pellets don't shoot great out of many airguns.

Aside from the AEA and JTS being a harder alloy, more consistent weight, and just the new kid on the block I've had mixed results.

In .22 25.4gr the AEA and JTS shot just as consistently as JSB @ 50 yards. But taking it out to 100 yards and the AEA and JTS fell apart. 3-4" groups @ 100 versus 1.5" or less with the JSB.

In .25 the AEA 34gr weren't so good, but the AEA 29.5gr appear very good at 100 yards. JTS were just okay.

In .30 the AEA 45gr blew away the JTS @ 100 yards and were a little better than the JSB.

Note the above are all in my guns, my barrels, whatever fps I was shooting at. Different guns, barrels, fps, etc and results could be mind bendingly different.

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JTS for some reason shoot different in my guns that AEA .. same for H&N. So those where melt .. but AEA are shooting great in all my guns way better than JSB .. what make me try them..I was trying to tune my now gone .25 vulcan 3 and the variation on the spread was simply ridiculous with jsb some in the 10 to 15 fps between shoots I thought that the regulator was bad .. got a tin of the AEA 34g and surprisingly spread go down to 1 to 3 fps .. so my point is not that they are superior, is that the company we all started in this hobby is making a fool of us selling us a way inferior products where the label says premium .. since we continue buying them they simply don't care, or maybe they think the product doesn't have a problem at all . When in reality the product have been in a down fall for quite some time .. only in matches I imagine that weight and sorting should be a most.. but the everyday shooter should be able to hit what he is aiming without the need of sorting supposedly premium product.. atleast the knockouts slugs so far still shooting great .. hope those don't go down the drain to.. with the technology these days and the perfection of CNC machines there is simply no excuse for the mix match of the jsb tins.. aside for sell them they are going to buy it anyway..

With how far airguns have advanced in the last 5 years, its about time pellet/slug manufacturing catches up! Keeping customers extremely satisfied and the industry standard high should be far more important than a CEO getting their next yacht.

I simply do not understand how manufacturers even bother producing pellets if they're going to produce junk that doesn't group worth a damn, we all know there are far too many brands saturating the market. Either step UP or step DOWN...imo.

That said, I have found that JTS's current .22 cal offerings produces great results out of my .22 mrod crossman barrel. That barrel really likes the harder lead. They're priced and produced competitively and I hope that remains as time marches on, which should keep others like JSB on their toes.

I am a much bigger fan of the direction JTS/AEA has gone with their weight offerings, opposed to JSB and their direction with deep/shallow skirts. It is far more likely that consistently produced pellets at various diameter (.2165 vs .218) at a proper weight (15gr vs 18gr vs 21gr vs 25gr) will shoot better than simply minor changes of skirt depth, at least imo.


-Matt