I am writing this review for the new released PMI USP ( Universal Service Pistol ).
This is a semi-automatic open bolt blow back pistol, powered by one single 12 gram CO2 cartridge.

12/27/04

When I received this pistol I ordered from Action Village today, I rushed home to test it out.

While I opened up the packing of the pistol, I noticed it came with quiet a few spare parts for the pistol.

One Barrel Plug, one black Barrel Tip, one "Red" main Hammer Spring, one Ball Detent, five O-Rings, one Cup Seal and two 12 Gram Seals.

Most the parts of the pistol were made of metal except the grip and few other small parts, like the cocking Slide, Rear Block/ Cushion and the Bolt. The body is made of Aluminum so the pistol is actually pretty light; I'd say it weights about one lb. fully loaded. The 45 grip is comfortable to hold and balances well.

Its size is not bad compared to other semi-auto pistols in the market, 13 inches long and 7 inches tall. It is about 2 inch longer than a PGP2K and 1 inch taller.

The pistol came with an orange barrel tip on, but it can be replaced with a black one, which is included in the package.

The spring feed magazine has an interesting design. The magazine is located on top of the barrel, but instead of feeding the balls backward into the chamber like others, the USP pistol feeds ball forward into the chamber. There is a "gate/cover" at the loading hole, connected to the plug at the front of the magazine. Open the gate/cover by twisting the plug to the right, load paint; twist the plug to left, closing the gate/cover. The design seems to speed up the loading time and is fairly easy to do in games. The spring knob also acts as a sight, located on twelve o'clock of the magazine. You could pull the knob back, slide it into a locking slot while reloading. But on my pistol, it has a small problem. The rear plug of the magazine seems goes into the magazine a bit too far, stopping the knob sliding into the locking slot. I can easily fix the problem by replacing the rear plug O-Ring with a normal tank O-Ring. The magazine is NOT removable. It holds 9rds in the magazine and one in the chamber.

The barrel is about five inches long, well polished.

There is a 12-gram drop out slot in the lower tube for fast reloading. The 12-gram plug has a very interesting design as well. It has a small piece metal level that you can pull out and turn sideways to add additional leverage while turning the plug. Also a small magnet is inside the plug, to hold both the metal level and 12-gram in position. The plug uses fast threading unlike the Sheridan PGPs.

While looking at the USP Pistol, you will notice that unlike other semi-auto pistols, the USP Pistol uses full size internal, which were adopted from the Piranha series of blow back semi-auto of PMI. Some says that PMI did not make the mistake that 32°/NPS made with the PT variants. In the PTs, they channel the gas down the side of the marker from the valve to the bolt, allowing the gas to expand once it is released from the valve, depleting it's effective power. In other words velocity on the PTs is almost always disappointing. I say almost always because if you really over spring it (heavy mainspring, shimmed and an ultra-light valve spring), swap in a higher flowing valve pin and run it on liquid CO2 you can almost get it up to 280 fps. Problem is, efficiency suffers horribly. I can get 10 decent shots out of a 12g and another 12 under 250 fps. 22 shots total. And only the first 10 are over 250 (on 12gs).

You shouldn't have to go to such extreme lengths with the USP pistol.

But sadly, the Pierce Pin on my pistol was defected when I receive it. It couldn't pierce the 12-gram. I am not able to do a further review on its performance at this point. I will contract PMI for a replacement.

Velocity Adjuster is located at the back of the lower tube. A stronger Hammer Spring is included for extreme velocity adjustment.

The grip frame is standard Piranha 45 grip from PMI, it has bottom line screw holes at the bottom.

Conclusion: A very affordable semi-auto pistol for paintballers. Has couple interesting designs, It seems to me that PMI worked out the issues of other semi-auto pistols have by using full size internal parts.

It is basically a PMI Piranha powered by 12 gram CO2, with a short barrel and a spring feed magazine on top.

I would continue the review once I received the replacement Pierce Pin from PMI.

12/28/04

Called PMI, spoke to Tech Ian. He was friendly and helpful, walked me through the process of loading 12 gram, but still no luck. He issued me a RMA number, have me sending back the whole gun for a throughout check up and repair.

12/29/04

While I was putting the gun back into the original packing martial, noticed another interesting fact. The metal level on the 12 grams plug must be a later add-on. The clear plastic packing only fits the gun without the metal level. I guess PMI had the packing thing made first; later on they realized that players wouldn’t able to pierce the 12-gram by turning the plug with their fingers. Not enough force. So they modified the design, added a small metal lever to have additional leverage.

Anyway, the gun was packed and shipped.

01/08/05

The gun has returned to me. The Pierce Pin has been replaced. The gun pierces 12 grams fine now, I aired up to gun, at unknown velocity, and it cycled twenty-one shots normally, then failed to re-cock after the 23rd shot.

02/21/05, 60°F in Sacramento, Cloudy.

Finally have a chance to use this pistol to finish my review. Life is busy, sorry for the wait.

Cock the gun and load in a fresh 12 gram, pierced without any trouble.

Time to load paint, um…. Now I found the magazine design isn’t as good as I thought it is. Since this is a open bolt pistol, the bolt remains open at all time, so when I load in paints, the 1st paintball would drop straight into the chamber, then the 2nd paintball would drop into the chamber half way instead of rolling down the magazine!!!!!!! That is because the thickness of barrel and magazine added extra space at the chamber location, space enough for the 2nd paintball to “sit” in. I found the best way to load paint in is hold the pistol with my left hand and hold the 10rd tube with my right hand. After the 1st paintball dropped in, I would place my left thumb into the chamber from the left side of the pistol; my thumb would redirect the rest of paintballs roll down the magazine instead of sitting above the 1st paintball. The process is a little complicated and isn’t fast.

Game time, I was able to get around 25 shots at semi-fast rate of fire on each 12 gram. Velocity was in 230~250 FPS range, velocity did jump up and down a bit between shots.

With some old GAP paint, (large bore), accuracy was okay, not the best and not the worst that I seen. Not breaks after 80 rounds.

It is fun to use; I got 4 kills with this pistol. I had a great time.

PMI says adding an optional Evil front pipe to the front of the pistol would improve accuracy. I am not going to try this because I don’t have an Evil pipe kit and I have no intension to add a barrel extension to a pistol. Please feel free to try it yourself.

Overall:

The PMI USP ( Universal Service Pistol ) is a decent semi-auto pistol for its price.

Reasonable well designed & made, lighter & smaller than the Zeus, simple operate, fair accuracy & effectiveness. Loading mechanism could use some improvement.

Not bad for $99.99. I would recommend this pistol to anyone.

Rate: 8 out of 10.

02/22/05

Just checked Action Village's site, they had dropped the price to $89.50. Whooo, what a deal.









04-24-05 Sac Pump Day XXIV - 2 year anniversary game.
64°F Partly Cloudy, Humidity 63%

Shamefully I did not use a pump gun at all that day. I was too happy with my USP.
Didn’t switch gun throughout the day which doesn’t happen often.

I stormed the filed with this pistol, averagely I got 3~4 kills per game.

It is light, I can move from bunker to bunker quickly. It is comfortable in my hand after I added an A-5 vertical front grip in front of the trigger guard and is very easy to aim. (I am so use to shoot my A-5 and the TMP in Crisis Zone.) The SP 45. wood grip helps a lot too.

I had no problems at all to get 30+ shoots off a single 12 gram, no matter how fast I shoot. (Within reasonable RPS of course. At least I don’t have to keep telling myself to shoot slow.)
Marballizer was the paint I used, I don’t know what velocity I was shooting and how consistent it was, but I can tell you it was good enough for me to get good amount of head shots in mid range. Throughout the day I didn’t need to reload 12 gram on field in game even once.

Reloading paint still isn’t fast but I am use to that. I often reload before I shot all 10rds, if I could. That way I won’t get caught empty. (If you are a good pistoler then you shall know when is good time to reload and when isn’t)

I always like to play with pistols, but now I actually found one that I enjoy using.