Paintball hoppers are to a paintball gun what a magazine (clip) is to a real pistol. It is the part of the gun that holds the ammunition or in this case – the paintballs. Paintball hoppers are a very important part of your paintball gear because without a hopper you gun will only hold a few paintballs or it may not fire at all. There are a many different types of hoppers on the market, and each has a specialized purpose and a different paintball capacity.
The standard type of paintball hoppers is called a gravity fed hopper, and is the most simple of all hoppers as it relies on gravity to feed the paintballs one by one into the marker. Gravity fed paintball hoppers are basically just a strangly shaped plastic container with a lid that is attached to the top of the gun by a small tube. Looks kind of like Tupperware.
Other popular paintball hoppers include the stick fed hopper which is attached to the side of the barrel and runs parallel to the bore. The player has to rock the gun in a particular motion in order to get the ball into the chamber. A more effective stick hopper is the vertical stick in which the balls are stacked one on top of the other and feed down into the gun.
The best of the paintball hoppers is called a force feeding hopper. These are an electronic battery powered hopper that uses a powered mechanical system to prevent jams and rapidly force a paintball out of the hopper and into the gun. Many of these hoppers also have a digital readout on the back that keeps track of how many paintballs are left in the hopper. These paintball hoppers are the favorite of the professional players.
A modified version of the gravity fed model of paintball hoppers is known as an agitator. They are named this because they use a small motorized fan blade at the bottom of the hopper that is designed to agitate the balls to prevent them from jamming up. These paintball hoppers were very popular a few years ago before the force hoppers hit the market.
