TLDR: The Taipan Veteran is pretty nice; I like it! 
I started in this hobby about a decade ago and, like many of you, quickly went down the rabbit hole and started buying everything in sight. In that time, I've gone through just about every PCP rifle that has ever piqued my curiosity which includes multiple models from Air Arms, Daystate, Vulcans, Colibris, just about every generation of most of the Edguns and too many FX to name.
There was one brand that I heard nothing but great things about but have always avoided like the plague: Taipan. It seems like every Mutant then Veteran owner praised their Taipan up and down . . . but, my god, those uber plain stocks left a lot to be desired. And when most other top end bullpups moved to the forward cocking lever while the Taipans still had theirs in the rear, it just didn't give me any reason to try one.
This year I pretty much ran out of things to try out so I finally gave in and picked up a 0.25 Veteran Standard. I had very low expectations and wasn't even that excited to get it (i.e. I wasn't checking the tracking 3x per day waiting for it to arrive like I'd normally do with most other purchases). I came home from work on day and the package was waiting for me at the front door. I opened it and my very first impressions were: 1) the stock isn't nearly as bad as they looked in all of the photos and 2) the overall build quality is way better than I expected. The Veteran appears to be a very simple, straightforward but very well built machine! So far so good!
With only a little bit of daylight left, I slapped a Hawke FFP scope on it and loaded up the mags with some 25.4g JSBs to sight it in. This is where it started to go sideways. This thing was spraying the JSBs all over the place. I thought it might be clipping the Ronin LDC so I took it off . . . but still had the same problem. I ran out of daylight and went to sleep thinking that I got a crappy shooter and that I was justified staying away from the Taipans all this time because, apparently, they suck!
Didn't sleep well that night and was anxious for some more daylight to try to sort things out. When I woke up the next day, I remembered that the previous owner had it set up to shoot the 34g JSBs at 840fps so it was probably shooting the lighter 25.4g's too hot to group well. I swapped out the 25.4g's for the 34g's and it's been stacking pellet after pellet at 40yds all day long. What an awesome, easy and consistent shooter! Even set up to shoot hotter than I normally prefer, this Veteran has a good shot count and is pretty quiet with a Sumo on it.
I'd also heard great things about the amazing trigger - but I think the previous owners (I think I'm at least the 4th owner of this rifle) had tinkered with it so I don't know what the factory set up feels like. As is, it's nice but not earth shattering stuff like others had built it up to be. The magazines are very much like the Edguns but appear to be better made . . . and way deeper to accomodate a wider range of pellets. The stock is better than I thought it would be and definitely serviceable but as soon as I can get the laminate version, I'll be in love.
If this rifle had a forward cocking lever, it would be very, very, very to beat all around. The rear cocking is awkward and slow. I'm sure I'll adjust to it and get better at it but it's a very unnatural motion to keep my right hand on the trigger while reaching across my face and the rifle to cock it with my left hand. The ergonomic, smooth cocking of the Impact, Vulcan and even the Leyla 2.0/R5M have ruined me for a rear cocking rifle.
All that said, I'm shocked to hear myself say this but this Veteran might be my go-to shooter going forward despite the dumb cocking shenanigans. A couple of photos below:
I started in this hobby about a decade ago and, like many of you, quickly went down the rabbit hole and started buying everything in sight. In that time, I've gone through just about every PCP rifle that has ever piqued my curiosity which includes multiple models from Air Arms, Daystate, Vulcans, Colibris, just about every generation of most of the Edguns and too many FX to name.
There was one brand that I heard nothing but great things about but have always avoided like the plague: Taipan. It seems like every Mutant then Veteran owner praised their Taipan up and down . . . but, my god, those uber plain stocks left a lot to be desired. And when most other top end bullpups moved to the forward cocking lever while the Taipans still had theirs in the rear, it just didn't give me any reason to try one.
This year I pretty much ran out of things to try out so I finally gave in and picked up a 0.25 Veteran Standard. I had very low expectations and wasn't even that excited to get it (i.e. I wasn't checking the tracking 3x per day waiting for it to arrive like I'd normally do with most other purchases). I came home from work on day and the package was waiting for me at the front door. I opened it and my very first impressions were: 1) the stock isn't nearly as bad as they looked in all of the photos and 2) the overall build quality is way better than I expected. The Veteran appears to be a very simple, straightforward but very well built machine! So far so good!
With only a little bit of daylight left, I slapped a Hawke FFP scope on it and loaded up the mags with some 25.4g JSBs to sight it in. This is where it started to go sideways. This thing was spraying the JSBs all over the place. I thought it might be clipping the Ronin LDC so I took it off . . . but still had the same problem. I ran out of daylight and went to sleep thinking that I got a crappy shooter and that I was justified staying away from the Taipans all this time because, apparently, they suck!
Didn't sleep well that night and was anxious for some more daylight to try to sort things out. When I woke up the next day, I remembered that the previous owner had it set up to shoot the 34g JSBs at 840fps so it was probably shooting the lighter 25.4g's too hot to group well. I swapped out the 25.4g's for the 34g's and it's been stacking pellet after pellet at 40yds all day long. What an awesome, easy and consistent shooter! Even set up to shoot hotter than I normally prefer, this Veteran has a good shot count and is pretty quiet with a Sumo on it.
I'd also heard great things about the amazing trigger - but I think the previous owners (I think I'm at least the 4th owner of this rifle) had tinkered with it so I don't know what the factory set up feels like. As is, it's nice but not earth shattering stuff like others had built it up to be. The magazines are very much like the Edguns but appear to be better made . . . and way deeper to accomodate a wider range of pellets. The stock is better than I thought it would be and definitely serviceable but as soon as I can get the laminate version, I'll be in love.
If this rifle had a forward cocking lever, it would be very, very, very to beat all around. The rear cocking is awkward and slow. I'm sure I'll adjust to it and get better at it but it's a very unnatural motion to keep my right hand on the trigger while reaching across my face and the rifle to cock it with my left hand. The ergonomic, smooth cocking of the Impact, Vulcan and even the Leyla 2.0/R5M have ruined me for a rear cocking rifle.
All that said, I'm shocked to hear myself say this but this Veteran might be my go-to shooter going forward despite the dumb cocking shenanigans. A couple of photos below:
