I just posted this in another thread but it is something that many people should know. The reputation of the Automag as a heavy gun is really quite exaggerated and somewhat unfair. For a while I myself fell for the hype but with time, and better accessories. I have been noticing that my automag really isn't that heavy (when I first bought it used it came with a stainless steel barrel, stainless steel dropforward, and a stainless steel nitro tank; it really was heavy.) We should all try harder to find the truth about the equipment we use rather than falling for the misinformed rumors and the corporate hype. Anyway, here is my experiment to find just how much heavier the Automag is:

I have two things to bring to this argument:
-more paintball paintball stuff sitting in my basement than should be there
-an accurate kitchen scale

I have said many times that the Automag is not significantly heavier than other paintball guns. I even said this to the boyfriend of Tempestwolf earlier this evening. After reading through this thread I decided to perform a little experiment.
I took two guns:

AUTOMAG 68 powerfeed left with tournement legal thumb adjuster, stock composite grip frame, AGD rubber wraparound grips, brass air line elbow, and nickel plated male quick disconnect fitting. No barrel, no foregrip, no dropforward.

PIRANHA G3 VTL with stock composite grip frame, stock plastic grip panels, beavertail sightrail (so the rear cocking knob doesn't smack ya in the face), aluminum asa to 1/8 NPT adapter, and nickel plated male quick disconnect fitting. No barrel, no foregrip, no dropforward.

I weighed each of them on my kitchen scale:

The Automag weighs 2 pounds even.

The Piranha weighs 1 pound 15 ounces.

Since we all know that there are 16 ounces to the pound we can see that the Automag does weigh more by a whole whopping ounce!

At this point, those of you who are reading this and are quite clever are saying, " but when you remove the barrel of an Automag you also remove the breach, and that is added weight which your experiment does not account for!"
This is true. Fortunately, I just happen to have a 14 inch All American barrel with stainless steel back for the automag, and I also just happen to have a 14 All American barrel with stainless steel back for the Pirahna. Since stainless is about the heaviest material barrels are made from, the steel backs will best accentuate the difference in weight. If both of these barrels were aluminum the difference would be less. Putting each in turn upon the trusty kitchen scale we see:

The Automag barrel weighs 11 ounces.

The Piranha barrel weighs 10 ounces.

Now we have another whole ounce difference between them, added to the first ounce it is plain to see that when each gun is set up with the minimum amount of equipment to run on a remote line, and when each is using the same barrel with stainless steel threads, the Automag weighs 2 ounces more than the Piranha. To put that into pwerspective, a Viewloader hopper elbow with thumbscrews weighs just about two ounces.
So is two ounces really enough weight to slow you down? Is the Automag really such a monsterous beast of a gun? Or do we just hear rumors about how heavy the Automag is, then look at the stainless steel valve and body and think "it must be heavy...it IS heavy...how can someone carry ALL THAT WEIGHT?!?!"