I try to find a happy balance in the hammer and the valve's relationship. This can be tricky on an unregulated gun, and a bit easier with regulated.
But I should note that if your transfer, barrel, or probe ports are inadequate or miss-aligned, you will be leaving a lot on the table in regards to potential power output. If your ports are too big l, your efficiency and power might suffer as well. So, checking, fixing, optimized ports is the first thing I do. Sometimes all I end up doing is radiusing the 90 degree turn into the barrel.
A quick, quiet, smooth shot cycle and subdued report is indicative of a balanced setup.
The way that I find this sweet spot is by simply making some rough regulator pressure adjustments, checking power output on a chronograph, then dialing in on where power start to really drop off in reguards to regulator pressure. Then repeat the same process but with hammer weight, spring tension, or both. Adjust a few percent below peak in all instances. Then shoot several shots, and test on targets to verify the tune is good. Tuned pcps a lot of times will have a very crisp, brief, and muted report. So you can also listen to the gun as well, and kind of be able to audibly confirm that it is operating the way you'd like.
From here, I'll go into trigger adjustments and cleaning up everything else on the gun.
