Wait you mean FX Smooth Twist X barrels aren't all the same due to how they're made like Matt Dubber has mentioned before??? Unbelievable.
Lol anyways yeah I give props to all of you who have stuck with the slug game and tuned and modified guns and put in all the time to get them right. I tried multiple guns and a decent amount of time and couldn't get them extremely consistent. I ended giving up and getting a pretty decent .22lr and called it good.
@bubblerboy64 only guns I personally know that are threaded into the receivers are AAA EVOLs which are extremely robustly threaded. And the Taipan Veteran which arent as big but gets the job done also.
Ha, you took the easy way! Reminds me of me sometimes. PCP's can be so frustrating compared to firearms.
Speaking of barrels only, and my reading of many magazine articles and posts on gun forums for the last 40 years, as well as limited personal experience, there can be extremes even with higher quality barrels let alone the cheap ones. The BR champions in the firearms world will source a batch of high quality barrels, I think I read one guy got 7 of them to test, then pick the best one, and a few more of the better ones, then sold the remainder. It could very well be that if say for instance I bought his worst barrel it might blow my mind how good it is, lol, but for him it didn't meet his standards. It might not shoot to my standard either though.
My friend has a Tikka 260 with original barrel that is very precise for a stock barrel but I've had many stock firearm rifles that didn't shoot well, or decent which would be moa, and a few of them dismal even with a bunch of load work done. But with the 12 or so higher quality aftermarket match barrels I've used only one of them didn't shoot well. Three of them were exceptional though!!! The rest were still sub moa, like .75" at 100Y which is good but not great.
I mentioned all that because I highly doubt that most airgun barrels could be considered truly match grade by firearms standards so there is a disadvantage for achieving high precision from the very start. On top of that I doubt the chambers are true enough to the bore, or optimized for an intended projectile, the crowns not cut well, rifling funky and other aspects of the barrel not done to match standards, and the list goes on. Then consistency of the projectile and its balance of CG, etc, etc. Also there is gun tune... And like Centercut mentioned "bad batches of barrels" can exist.
I lucked out with my Uragan King in 25 cal using NSA 29gr slugs, only ones I've tried in it, and I haven't changed a thing as far as tune, these shoot decent too.
All the work was done before I got my slug barrel from Mike N for SURELY which was such a relief to me because it shoots excellent, though I use custom swaged slugs fit to a match grade barrel which is chambered and crowned to a high standard. All helps to ensure success.
^^^ fortunate for me because I have no patience for a dismal start especially after spending a lot of $ and effort to find dissatisfactory results. Ouch, Mike I've been there so many times before so I can certainly have empathy !!!$$$$!@#$%
Good post and a lot of truth in here!