Mares Bazooka 140 cm

Dan is right in that there aren't much difference at all between new and old in traditional oleos like these.

Personally, I will say this about the two examples mentioned. The Seac Asso has the strongest trigger pull of pretty much all the off-the-shelf guns being sold these days (maybe a few more with ol'skool 3mm triggers out there; Cressi SL?). Enough of a reason for me to rule it out for non-tinkerers (it is a 15-20E modification, if you can get the parts and feel like doing the swap). The old Cyrano, which I have never shot, is said to be nose heavy on account of the slimmed down nose.
Personally, balance and a smooth trigger pull are the two exact things, I care the most about in these guns since most other things are equal - so though they are tiny improvements I do think they are worthwhile in newer guns.
That said, 30 year old Stens, Jets, Tiguilios, etc should all shoot as powerful as a 2017 Sten today. (Oh, I forgot, as Pete mentioned, that escape holes in the muzzles have possibly been bettered. Again, go nuts at home with a dremel and you should be up there with the newer ones).

I do hope and expect Mares got the balance right when going with hydroformed barrels on the new Evo, but it could be more bling than practically needed. Or perhaps half/half (a friend in Denmark has one, he feels it balances beautifully).
The insides work exactly as a Sten did for decades though one day, it would be good to verify if the bigger transfer port through the bulkhead is an actually improvement or just sales-speak. That would imply that the traditional 6mm port hole would be throttling the air flow and I don't know if that is the case.

In reg. to the One Air, I have one and I agree that it fails to impress when looking at it in real life. It's a job half done for sure. Just the way the nose cone intersects with the barrel looks like an afterthought. The handle could be the best feeling of any mass produced airgun though its design robs the gun of efficient "band stretch" and its line release is a bit retarded, too. But the gun just shoots so clean and smoothly on account of its bulk. So, while I like how it shoots, I have never fallen totally in love with it.

(There is one thing we didn't mention this time when it comes to the Predathor. It is the best priced for a dry barrel gun. A Sten would need an E40 muzzle and often times a new E20-25 spear to be directly comparable and would end up quite a bit more expensive.)

Quote from popgun pete

[...]Today there is talk of teething problems and guns being sorted out with a need to be patient as the fixes come through. In the early days guns with even a hint of trouble were dropped like a hot rock and never considered again, so new guns were only let out after all bugs had gone. Now the need is for a procession of new models every few years and the development time is just not there, so "beta test" guns get sold to the public.
[...]

I very much agree, we def have a few cases in point right here on this very thread - One Air and the new Evo. Predathor had crappy slider, less but still an issue (have been rectified now, supposedly).

Maybe we're spoiled today with all the gear choices available to us. Some years ago tinkering with spearguns was expected/part of the deal. I have a reminder of this hanging in my office see pic below. You can put a rubber band around the barrel of any pneumatic and tuck the shooting line under it, creating a reliable line release. It's just the prices of some spearguns today and the marketing.. I think you're allowed to expect to not have to tinker, and to bitch about it if you do.

Cuban home made pneumatic speargun

Quote from Don Paul

Great insight Peter, I completely agree mate.
Funny how this thread started about dinosaurs and evolved to the future and current state of many manufactures modern business models.
Cheers, Don

Yes, and I imagine that the old Mares designers and engineers who presided over the "TITAN" and first "STEN" series pneumatic spearguns would be spinning in their graves to see the "Cyrano Evo" as it is being currently churned out. Mares stood for quality, reliability, innovation and style; now style has triumphed over substance and for the solutions they need to study their past as they have strayed into "no go" areas with bad geometry in their guns. Salvimar have stuck with the reliable SCUBAPRO Magnum's innards and just given it a new set of clothes in the "Predathor", plus kept know-how and jobs in Italy which avoids nasty surprises from fallible subcontractors on the other side of the planet..

Quote from Dan

Is it really worth it to buy a "new and improved" model from Mares with all these problems? Why not just use a proven design such as the old Mares Cyrano or Seac Asso? I know the basic function of a pneumatic is the same so there can't be a significant power increase with the new designs.

Again, I'm not a theoretical guy (even if I'm a mechanical engineer), but yes. It is worth. I used pneumatics in the past and switched to band guns due to trigger sensitivity and shaft speed. When I first tried the new Cyrano EVO, it was love.
Trigger as soft as the softest band gun, amazing shaft speed, power as a double banded 110-120 with the total length of a 75 and very good balance overall. Of course there are downsides, but again for what I bought it is close to perfect (big fish in murky water). I can pay the price of changing a 1$ part now and then.

All these fish were taken with the 100 cm Cyrano EVO HF

Man, that's the best oleo post I think I have ever seen. No BS, just the pics:-)

Mares should refund you the money you gave them and send you a Xmas card, haha.

Beautiful fish, thanks!

[EDIT]
Come to think about it, I am beginning to think oleos are cheaper to run in the long term - the no nonsense ones, that is. Air costs a whole lot less than new rubbers. And an o-ring set is less than 10 bucks. I started with airguns and only getting slowly into bandguns now, but of course I felt like I had to immediately run out and get fancy rubbers for that;-).

This is how mine looks now

Pictures.

Compared with a Riffe C3, a Picasso 100 and the Salvi 115.

No bullshit. Real life fish and guns.

How did you do the camo, is it a sticker? Is it because the paint was coming off the barrel fast?

It's a neoprene sleeve. Quite common in Italy - and I think I see the logo from one of the Italian shops printed on one of the sleeves, too;-)
It helps with buoyancy, too (obviously not at depth).
(Neossub)

Which reminds of one disadvantage of pneumatics, they lose power at depth.

Quote from Dan

Which reminds of one disadvantage of pneumatics, they lose power at depth.

Negligible. 2 atm at 30 meters. I can live with that. Here in Panama is very rare to dive deeper that 15 meters. There's no visibility. I'm not sure, but I've read that bands also loose power at depth. Is that true?

It is a neoprene sleeve from Neos Sub in Italy. 15 Euros. And yes, it helps with buoyancy.

Paint is not the best, and a friend from Spain advised me to wrap the barrel with 3M electric tape to avoid corrosion from sea water trapped between the sleeve and the barrel, which I did.

Quote from Dan

Which reminds of one disadvantage of pneumatics, they lose power at depth.

Quote from Marco

Negligible. 2 atm at 30 meters. I can live with that. Here in Panama is very rare to dive deeper that 15 meters. There's no visibility. I'm not sure, but I've read that bands also loose power at depth. Is that true?
[...]

Yes, I was about to call Dan's comment "cute";)
Strictly speaking, Dan is right of course, they do loose power, but nothing major unless you dive very deep.

Not sure if it is 2 bar loss at 30m or 3 bar. Maybe Pete can help on that one. I would think it would be 1 bar per 10m. No need to count the 1 bar for atmospheric pressure at the surface as that would act on the gun, too (I think).
If my math is correct, Marco looses 1.5 bar of power at his max depth which is a 6% loss as his gun is loaded at 25 bar. So, yes - negligible.

in reg. to bands, I have heard such a thing as "band soak" or similar exists in bandguns;-). I think I have heard numbers of about 15% loss of rubber force with prolonged loading times. Actually, I could test that as I have whacked together a test bench for breaking lines and such. Supposedly, bands loose power with a lower temps, too which can be noticed by spearos diving in the cold waters.

The before mentioned test bench; scale goes to 300kg, ratchet strap thingmajing to more:

Ha! I have an extra yellow cargo strap, now I know what I'm going to do with it :thumbsup5:

Some scuba divers go deep to shoot fish. At 40 meters I'm told the power loss is significant, going deeper than that the gun gradually becomes useless.

Quote from Dan

Ha! I have an extra yellow cargo strap, now I know what I'm going to do with it :thumbsup5:

Some scuba divers go deep to shoot fish. At 40 meters I'm told the power loss is significant, going deeper than that the gun gradually becomes useless.

True, I did give scuba hunters a brief thought, but then again, I don't care much for them, so didn't go into it.
Again, if my math holds true, then 40 meters should result in a pressure differential of 4bar and as such ((4/25) x 100) a 16% power loss on a 25 bar gun. 50m would give a 20% loss. But again, if the gun is more powerful than a band gun to start with, I do think the loss is not a huge issue (unless it aims vastly different with depth). But a commercial scuba spearo would have so much water time, he would get used to that.

Here's a Corsican deep freedive spearo who uses pneumatics (they are crazy pimped, though). He is quite "Forza ME, ME, ME!" but his skills are pretty mad, so I still enjoy his vids:

https://youtu.be/-t_yuLirUiA

Quote from Don Paul

I hope those Bubble butts loose all their gun power.:bs2:

Cheers, Don

Man, here in China internet speeds can be pretty slow, so when I feel like watching youtube spearo videos I often just bulk download a batch of them based on their titles and watch them later. I absolutely hate when a bubble blower one sneaks in.
I have changed my stance on commercial spearing, though. I think it is OK for them. Except for one video I came across of a dude sitting on a wreck shooting big AJs with bangsticks... The fish would come right up to him and he would blow their brains out and it would just drop next to him. Then after a while he would swim around and collect the 'bodies' and head up...
On the other hand, I guess it is not much different than a slaughterhouse, it just looks off when it is in the wild.

Anyways, I digress.

I have been trying to find a pic of a Bazooka for you from a friend in Denmark who sacrilegious added carbon fiber reservoirs to his:D. I'll ask him for it and post it here, if I get it:-)