Suppressor Back Pressure Testing Part 2: 11.5″ SBR vs 16″ – SilencerCo, B&T, Surefire, Dead Air, KGM

Overview:

In this video we follow up on our original suppressor back pressure test and ask the question, what happens if we drop down from a 16" barrel length to a 11.5" barrel? We found very interesting results, especially in some of the low back pressure suppressors such as the Huxwrx Ventum, B&T SRBS Ti and SilencerCo Velos. We use the Riflespeed gas controls to determine the proper amount of gas for each suppressor and so that we can create & observe repeatable results. See full list of suppressors tested below along with a link to the part 1 video.
#556 #suppressor #silencer #hunting #hunter #762

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00:00 - Intro
00:20 - 11.5" Rifle Specs
01:08 - Riflespeed Gas Control Settings
02:02 - Test Results

Transcript:

Hey everybody, Rob Orgel. And so far, I think our favorite video out there in the wild is the back pressure test on the 16-inch gun. So we decided, hey, let's reinvestigate and do the whole test all over again, but let's run it on the 11.5-inch. So we built this 11.5. You probably saw a video about that if you're one of our subscribers. Thank you, by the way. What we did is built the same rifle speed gas block on a carbine length, obviously, on an 11.5-inch. Now, because this 11.5-inch is just crazy overgassed, and most AR-15s do overgassed. But this one specifically was just crazy. So we had to use the Springco Red Spring, which was an increased weight spring. I forget which buffer we had to use in it. And then we had to, within the rifle speed gas blocks, they have different lengths and plungers. And we had to get the second longest plunger in order to get room for deviation between the baseline, which is the Omega 300, and the unsurpressed setting. So it took some fine tuning. But in the end, obviously, you know, ammunition, in case you don't remember, we're doing the PMC X-TAC 55-grain. That's a full metal jacket, boat tail round. And we ran a ton of ammo through it today, and we have our results. So without a suppressor on the 11.5, it is position nine. If we choke it down to eight, sometimes we'll get hold open, but not reliably. So position nine is the no suppressor, no additional back pressure.

All the way down to position three. Position three was that baseline, again, the Omega 300, which is a pretty high back pressure suppressor. We did have one suppressor that had even more back pressure than the Omega 300, and you'll see that in our chart. But here you have another well-rounded experiment of all the information we've compiled together. We've looked for multiple last round hold open in this configuration. And as you can see, we ran through each and every one of these suppressors. Now you might see a deviation, the 16-inch setup.

There's a lot of barrel length restrictions on some of the older titanium suppressors. So unfortunately, like the Nomad Titanium, the Nomad Titanium L, we couldn't do it on this gun. We also decided that the back pressure was pretty uniform on the 16, so there was really not much of a need to, one, take the risk, and two, the redundancy of repeating that test again on the 11.5. So as you can see here, this is our chart from our 11.5-inch gun. We also have a chart for our 16-inch gun, and you'll see where no suppressor is nine, meaning no back pressure, obviously, because there's no suppressor. And then you'll move down that chart and see the lower that number is, the more we have to choke off gas in order to not over gas. So you'll see it drops all the way down to the Grunt Mini, who's a position two. From there, you'll see threes, fours, and once you hit those fives, you're looking really good on back pressure, five, sixes, and sevens. Seven is very, very good on back pressure. And I believe we had one that performed all the way to eight, and that was the Ventum 762, as I mentioned before. That thing is impressively low on its back pressure, almost to the unsurpress setting. Okay, so one thing that we noticed that really blew our mind is the Huxworks stuff. You remember the last video, obviously it performed the best, and the sound testing video might make you not love Huxworks because it's not the quietest suppressor. However, the Flow and QD were the top performers with the Ventum close behind it. What's really weird is when we went to the shorter configuration, the Ventum actually outperformed the Flow K and the QD, which totally blew my mind. So let's be honest here. When I saw the Ventum, I talked with one of my buddies and I said, "This is just a cheaper version "of a good suppressor, isn't it? "It's not fully 3D printed. "It's kind of a way around." And we agreed that it was just not interesting. Well, once we started testing, we said, "We should have it. "We should use it for testing." And it really performed today. And you can argue, well, it's a 762 diameter, not a five, five, six diameter. That usually gets you like one point, as far as the choke points go, but not as well as it performed today. So it kind of blew our mind today. The other one that surprised us was the B and T reduced back pressure 556 titanium. So on the longer configuration, it only performed okay. It matched some of the suppressors that are lower back pressure, but not specifically designed to be back pressure. Well, when we moved into the 11.5, this thing caught up. It actually matched the Surefire RC3 suppressor in back pressure, which is pretty surprising. The RC3 is a pretty good suppressor when it comes to back pressure. What I found on the RC3 and the Ventum is that if you have any type of mitigation system on your weapon, you need to run it in the unsuppressed setting in order to get last round hold open, because it really does add just a little bit of gas. So when you say the spectrum is one all the way up to 10, and you're telling me it's five, each one of those tick marks is a big leap. So that's half of the gas, and that's very substantial because suppressors put a ton of gas back into your weapon. So those low back pressure guys are actually really performing at that low back pressure setting. Some of my weapons that do have the suppressed to unsuppressed setting, I find that it's gotta be like on the scale, it's gotta be like in the bad department, like between a one and a three, in order to get last round hold open in the suppressor setting. So all of the flow through guys are actually doing a pretty good job. And I wanna tell you one more thing about the Velos. When I saw the commercial from SilencerCo, let's be honest, SilencerCo does really good advertisement. Some stuff, I'm finding deviations between what their website says and when I weigh the Silencer, I think they're not including the muzzle devices or mounts or ASRs, whatever, they're not including those, they're doing just suppressor weight. So we're gonna go head to head in the video very soon about reduced back pressure suppressors, and really go fair on the full spectrum. But having said that, they do so good on their advertising that when I watch a commercial from them, they modify the sound and it sounds Hollywood cool, and it gets me to buy stuff, but then I get home and I'm not impressed with its performance. And when they released the Velos, I was watching the commercial and brass was ejecting pretty aggressively forward. So right away, my brain said, "I'm not interested in the Velos, "that's not a low back pressure suppressor, "that's just good advertising."

Well, I'm wrong, it is low back pressure, and today I got proved wrong, and I'm okay with being wrong, that's how we learn. But I threw the idea out there that it's not an impressive can, so I didn't want one. And after our first video, everybody's like, "Where's the Velos? "You're doing a low back pressure, where's the Velos?" And I was like, "Okay, I'll buy one." So I bought one, you guys convinced me, and I'm glad I did. It actually is a very good low back pressure suppressor. When we put it head to head with the other low back pressure cans, you might find it doesn't take first place, but it is still a good suppressor. Anyways, lots of time and energy went into making this video. I hope you all enjoyed it. I hope you all get to learn from my experiences and the mistakes that I've made. And now we've got a good system for the 16 inch, we've got a good system for the 11.5, and we have more suppressors on the way. So make sure you like, comment, and subscribe, and tell us of the lineup that you see in that chart, which suppressor you want the most.