Intro: First of all, before I get flamed for owning a huge drum mag by the “OMG that’s unrealistic” crowd, let me explain. No, my gun is not technically a SAW (mostly because the RPK kit is way too expensive), but 90% of the reason I got this was because I like the look (the other 10% was because it’s nice not to have to carry a bag of extra ammo with me). Also, I would never use 3000 rounds in one day, much less one game, and anyone who does is either really trigger happy or has no ability to aim. I am not the trigger happy type, but I like to lay down some cover fire occasionally for my friends with MP5s, P90s, and the like. So don’t flame me, I am just as annoyed by people who just “spray and pray” as you are.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to the meat of the review. Up until 2 months ago, there were 2 choices if you wanted a drum mag for your AK: TOP ($60, hand-wound 1000 round drum, unreliable and requires assembly and cannibalizing an AK mag) or Trapper Industries ($180 custom-built 1300 round hand-wound drum, somewhat reliable by most accounts but very rare & very little info out there about it). Since one was too unreliable and the other was too expensive, I realized that I might never accomplish my dream of having a reliable multipurpose AK47 with a drum mag. 2 months ago, when I was looking for something to buy after selling my KJW M700, I noticed a image on Redwolf that showed a Hero Arms electric 3000 round drum mag that said “coming soon.” I decided then and there if it was released soon and was around $100-$150 I would buy one (instead of the Marushin Mossberg 8mm shotgun I was planning to buy). So, about 2 weeks later, it was released with a pricetag of $140, so I ordered it along with 2 bags of 2500 excel BBs, and it arrived this morning at my house.

First Impressions:



After excitedly cutting open the fedex box, I found a square white cardboard box with a large sticker saying “RUSSIA AK DRUM” and under that “3000 round electic (yes, it was spelled wrong) magazine. For: Marui AK47, Hurricane SR47. Hero Arms, Model No. C016.”



Inside the box, there was a single page of very simple instructions (just pictures, no explanations), along with the detachable pressure switch in a Ziploc bag and the drum mag wrapped in bubble wrap.



Externally, the mag is made completely out of very solid steel with a slightly shiny grayish finish similar to that of the AK receiver. The front of the mag has some sort of lever which is just cosmetic, as well as a very small button which you press to release the plate which forces the BBs into the feeder mechanism on the inside.



The back of the mag has a large dial (which holds the back of the drum on when you’re not filling it with BBs) as well as a small plug for the pressure switch wire to connect to the mag. Overall, it’s very solid, very heavy, and looks like it could take a beating.

Loading: To load up the mag, the first step is to unscrew the dial on the back of the drum, which then pulls right off to reveal the internals:



One half of the mag is empty space for BBs, and the other half contains some important looking motors, wires, and a plastic wheel into which the BBs are fed and wound. The two halves are separated by a panel, seen here:



One half of the panel is spring-loaded and must be pulled about 45 degrees downward before loading BBs (I assume this is what keeps pressure on the BBs and allows them to be forced into the winding mechanism). So, the next step (after pulling down the panel and filling the top half of the drum with about 2500 BBs) is to put in 4 AA batteries (not included).



Unhook the rubber band around the battery holder, pop in the batteries, and put the rubber band back on to hold the battery holder in place. Then, just pop the back of the drum back on and reattach the dial to hold it in place, turn over the mag and press the release button on the front, and you’re ready to go. Well, almost.

Performance: I can honestly say that this thing performs great. The only problem is the hour and a half of dremeling away part of my magazine catch that it took to get the drum to fit in my gun. You see, when they designed this mag, they must have been using some weird metal body (possibly the hurricane SR47 body like it says on the box?) that lowers the mag catch on the rear of the mag (seen below) about 1/8 inch.



This causes the mag to refuse to snap into place in your receiver, meaning it is literally not useable out of the box unless you feel like holding a 3lb drum in place under your gun when you’re firing it. The modification I had to have my friend do to get it to fit also caused my other mags to not fit properly in my gun, so that meant adding in plastic spacers under the back mag catch on all my other mags. To get the drum mag to fit, we first tried filing down the mag catch on the back of the mag, but that wasn’t making nearly enough difference to get it to fit (the mag catch is significantly too low to snap in place). So after thinking it over, we decided to grind the gun’s mag catch down about 1/8 inch to get this drum to fit, which is somewhat risky because I haven’t been able to find any replacements for that specific part anywhere (meaning if you screw up and grind too much, your gun may not feed BBs properly anymore). After dremeling bit by bit off of the gun’s mag catch, we finally got it to fit and were able to superglue bits of plastic to my other mags to make them fit. Here are some pics of my gun’s modified mag catch and the plastic spacers glued to my mags:

Modded mag catch


Modded TM hicap catch


However, it’s not all bad. Once you get the mag to fit properly (and it does fit very securely now after the mod), it performs great. The winding noise is similar to a fairly muffled lower-pitch AEG motor noise, and it seems to change slightly once your mag is fully wound. When firing, I can get about 40-50 rounds per wind, which is about the same as a normal TM hicap, and then I just press the pressure switch for 1-2 seconds and it’s wound again. I haven’t had any misfeeding problems or anything like that, so I’m very happy about that (this thing is as reliable or more reliable than my TM 600 round hicap).

Final thoughts: Overall, other than the rather annoying initial fitting problems, I would say I am very happy with this drum mag. If you own and know how to use a dremel (or are willing to manually file the mag catch down, which will take a long time) then I would not hesitate to recommend this to you. However, if you don’t like to mess with and modify your guns or don’t feel comfortable cutting and grinding parts down to get them to fit, I might suggest that you stick to normal TM AK mags. I don’t know if my mag’s problem was just a fluke, or if it’s just a first-run problem that will be fixed in later versions of the drum, but I know that it is fixable and it’s not that hard to fix if you’re somewhat good with tools or know someone who is (I made my friend do it for me). So anyway, thanks for reading my (rather long) review and I hope it helps you out since I think it’s the first review of this new magazine. If you have any questions, PM me or post them here and I’ll do my best to help you out.

This post has been edited by -=Bloodred=-: Jan 30 2006, 11:54 PM

Good review, and good pictures too. Thanks.

It's a shame the mag does not sit correctly in the gun without modification, as that gives me reservation about buying one.

Here are some pics of my gun with the mag (the vertical foregrip was custom-mounted btw):

Nice review, if I had not sold my AK47 a few mothes back, this would have convinced me to buy both the Drum Mag, as well as the Black body kit...

Thanks... I love my AK, and the drum mag makes it even crazier than usual. The furniture was just sanded and spraypainted though because I didn't want to pay for the black body kit when I could paint it for cheaper.

do you think the drum mag may have been a lemon?

May have been... the only other people I've seen who had one said it fit fine...

O its painted, I painted mine when I had it...I jsut thought since you had the rail on there....did you screw that on yourself?

I love my Drum mag. It actually fit fine in my TM Ak47 and in a TM spetznaz I just had to push it a little harder and it locked in. The only small problem I had was that at first was that the bbs didn't feed up when I pushed the button, but after a little while, they fed fine. It was probably because it was new.

Bloodred, your AK is TM right? Because it ws probably a measurement problem on your mag if it is TM.

Another thing about the drum mag is that it scratches and gets dirty easily so don't expect it to be clean. It's for a terrorist gun anyway.

This post has been edited by CookieMonster: Jan 31 2006, 10:01 PM

My friend used his drill (I don't own any good tools) to drill through the lower front foregrip, and then just ground down the underside of a metal G36C side rail to fit the contour of the foregrip, and 2 screws and 2 nuts from the hardware store later, I had a rail on my AK.


Yes, my AK is TM, and I tried several times to get this thing to fit in before modding it, but it wasn't even close. As I said, the mag catch on the drum mag was about 1/4 inch too low to snap in place, so after grinding down my gun's mag catch and adding some quick plastic spacers onto my other 2 hicaps, it fits securely and snaps in place the way it should (as do my other mags). It actually wasn't that hard, but after waiting a long time for fedex to deliver the dang thing (I hate fedex) it was reeeeeally irritating not to be able to use it in that day's game because it didn't fit my gun. But that's life, and it works now, so I'll post how it fares in our next game next weekend.

Wow... I just have to say that AK looks really good lol... even with a few simple modifications it's like 50x better. Then again I don't like the normal wood ak that much =\

Does the drum mag feed all the bbs in it? because if the little plate thing only goes back 45 degrees wouldnt it leave a bunch of bbs in the mag that cant be shot out?

In theory, yes, but somehow it works perfectly, so I don't question it.

Sweet- I'll be getting one of these in the near future. Mine will be going on my RPK (custom made- as the RPK kit is too expensive). Yeah, I do a lot of spray and pray- but that is the nature of a support weapon. Need to make the AK look the part it plays (I am a support gunner at heart- I let the younger faster guys move while I suppress).

~K

Yeah, I use my AK as a gunner. I have a bipod and Drum mag and it looks awsome.

Here's a pic of me at a event. I was kind of messy that day and I was supposed to wear the shemagh on my head, but it was too hot.

It's a TM AK47 with a G&P wood kit, real AK bipod and Hero Arms drum mag

This post has been edited by CookieMonster: Feb 2 2006, 03:27 PM

So... any other mods willing to approve this review so I can put the link in my sig?

Approved (now where is my stamp?).


If you see any other reviews, or find some other people who own this, please see if they had to modify their gun because that's the only thing that will be a turn off for some people to buy this drum mag.

This post has been edited by TriChrome: Feb 3 2006, 06:25 PM

Well, out of the two other people I've talked to who own this (CookieMonster and another guy on Arnie's), neither had to modify their guns at all, so if you're thinking about buying this and not sure if it will fit your TM, I'd be willing to bet it will. I think mine was just a freak manufacturing error or something.

Bloodred...you have about the same look on your gun as mine...accept mine is made to look like a RPK-74..I had ordered the same drum mag a few days ago , so my gun is gonna look just like yours ( it also has a dragunov scope on it). Ive had people tell me its gonna look really weird with the drum mag but now that ive seen a pic of yours I think its gonna look great.

So yeah, I tried to use this in a game this weekend, but after 2-3 5 round bursts, the last tooth on my piston (Deepfire half-tooth) cracked and broke off (just my luck). I went down to steelhawk airsoft today and picked up a guarder one though, so I should be able to update with how it fares in the field next weekend...

This post has been edited by -=Bloodred=-: Feb 5 2006, 05:27 PM

Wow, that is really weird because a tooth in my piston broke too when I shot it last week and a guy fixed it for me and put a alunimum piston. The mag fed well, but too bad I didn't get it use it a lot

I found another solution for people who don't want to mod their mag/mag catch. It'll take about 2 minutes to load the mag but doesn't require any mods. Unscrew the trigger guard, place drum in place and screw everything back together :) This method should work for most people since I don't think a lot of us will got through 3000 rounds a day.

P.S I've tried my drum with CA and DTP metal receivers. It seems to fit DTP good but doesn't fit CA at all.

This post has been edited by babay: Feb 15 2006, 05:17 AM

Sweet review man, your gun looks awesome!!

dam that black bodykit looks nice so does the 3000 round drum id love to have that that would be perfect to spray and pray

Uh, pray and spray is exactly what's looked down upon on these forums.

For an update on this product my cousin bought one a couple weeks ago. It's been through 2 games (including a 3 game, 2-day event) and it works perfect. It fits onto his AK-Beita Spetsnaz, and his G&G RK-104 without any trouble.

He also bought the self-winding model so he never has to press the pressure switch to wind it (although it still came with the switch).

This post has been edited by TriChrome: Jun 2 2006, 02:22 PM

You got it to fit in the RK-104? Myself and cookie tried fiting it in the my SLR at the time, and silver bullets G&G RK 104, and it would not fit. Did it just slip right in, like it does with TM AK's?

You think this would work on a UTG commando?
That would be friggin sweet. Although the drum mag would cost more than the gun...

Yes, yes, will this fit in any of the UTG Ak's?

I'm gonna buy the UTG Ak and then spend more money pimping it out than on the gun itself, lol.

It should fit the UTG, but I don't know for sure since there might be some very slight difference in magwell size that could cause it not to fit. Also, get a TM AK if you can... buying this for a UTG seems kinda pointless... it's like slapping a turbo on a saturn or something instead of just buying a stock BMW. The TM will probably last you a lot longer, and it's always best to use the gun the parts were made for so you don't have to worry about compatibility.

Great review and pics. To bad on the modifications. Is there anything after market to use?