I'm going to say a few things here.
1) I have full faith in AoA's service department. Don is an incredible technician, he has vast knowledge of airguns and firearms with many years of experience; I trust his knowledge and diagnostics skills without question. Shane, the service manager, is also awesome in terms of professionalism and follow through. One of the reasons we chose AoA as our Distributor is their service capability.
Every EVOL purchased from an Authorized dealer or AoA comes with the AoA service department. This is a very valuable feature which AAA and the customer is paying for when they purchase; it's there for your you; please don't forget this is your main access to support. If there is an issue which AoA support cannot handle they will reach out to us and we will respond.
I cannot emphasise how important this relationship is to us,our dealers and AoA. If something is wrong - part fails, or slips through quality assurance we will know. The AoA service department regularly sends service reports to us. This timely communications allow us to implement any necessary changes to production immediately. This process made it possible to correct reservoir O-ring failures in one build cycle.
2) I see the term "barrel lottery" a lot. As a manufacture, let me assure you, we do not play the lottery with barrels. There is nothing worse for the bottom line than having poor performing guns come back to the factory for repair and/or evaluation. The cost associated with and EVOL is in the materials and labor to construct it to our standards. There is no cost buffer in the business model to repair or replace for non-conforming products like some manufactures allow; this why all efforts to build the best is put into the front end during design and manufacture.
As an example this is how our barrel QC and assembly operate:
* Barrels are sourced from the manufacture as blanks made from our proprietary tooling.
* Upon receipt, each barrels is cleaned and inspected with a borescope. If there are any interior issues like pitting. scratches, malformed areas, etc the barrel is rejected.
* Next they they are checked with custom pin gauges to make sure they are the correct size on both ends, if out of spec. they are rejected.
* Now they can move forward for threading. Barrels are cucked in a special collect chuck that allows all runout to be adjusted out, both axially and radially. If a barrel needs more than 0.0075" of adjustment it is rejected.
* After threading the barrels are crowned, then they are cleaned again, slugged for diametrical consistency and clean release from the crown. If there are subtle inconsistencies in the bore we will mark for additional polishing. If there is a serious inconsistency the barrel will be rejected.
* The final step is final polish. Now the barrel is ready for final assembly.
3) Rattling stock - EVOL is designed to be be fully AR-15 Complaint in terms of grip and stock selection. We all know that all enthusiasts like to make their own choices; this compatibility allows for this type of customization. Magpul was chosen because they are US made and considered to be the gold standard for quality and availability. Beyond the compatibility, having the ability to purchase good quality commodity parts at a price far below what we could ever duplicate at any scale allows us to concentrate and apply our resources to our core competency - the airgun itself. Like I said above, resources are spent on materials and machining that will provide performance. reliability, durability and a nearly unlimited service life.