The gun is as far from perfect as it gets, without losing enough status to be left as an instant classic.

With as many people as have this gun, it's a wonder that CA hasn't fixed the countless flaws with it.

To be honest with you, the gun has more problems than my car, and the gun isn't 40 years old yet. But, with the few quick modifications we've performed, it's solid for the time being.

I like the gun; don't get me wrong, but it's well flawed.
It has attitude, to put it in a more likeable terminology.

We have contacted CA but haven't received any reply. Will keep you guys updated.

Same for the MP5 handbook. Sorry for the delay :<

Click here to visit our in-progress picture gallery.

Well, even though many of the non-TM guns are inferior quality-wise, our belief is that a good gunsmith should be capable of fixing and upgrading any gun. Below shows an Academy MP5 upgraded by one of our editors:

This baby is now equipped with an ICS hopup unit, a TM sector gear, metal bushings, and a slightly shortened M120 spring. Still powered by the stock EG560 and a 8.4V Sanyo, the gun shoots at ~360fps with a ROF of 23 on average. Pretty good isn't it?

Below shows the gun in its original form. Quite a difference!

Frankly, the CYMA MP5 SD5 AEG is a piece of junk. However, it does have a pretty solid lower receiver. We tried to use this receiver to replace the ICS one but failed due to significant differences in size and shape. We then tried it on a TM MP5 and it worked fairly well (with some glitches though):

First of all, we had to do minor cutting on the receiver to make it fit (if you have one on hand you will know what I mean). Secondly, it's color scheme was found to be incorrect (see below for a comparison between the CYMA one and the TM one).

Thirdly, the hole for the selector nut was too big, thus making it possible to rotate the selector freely without limits (it did not cause any damage to the selector plate though). 

Finally, the screw holders on the hand grip (for affixing the motor plate) were found to be fragile - they can easily break if you screw it too tight.

Below are the pictures of our upgraded Academy L85A1 (SA80) AEG. Code named SA80 Shorty, this not-for-resale AEG is equipped with a FAMAS compatible gearbox, a PDI 120% spring and a TM MP5K short barrel. A fairly good ROF of 20 rounds per second was demonstrated. One major shortcoming of this AEG is the use of a fixed hopup unit, which is quite inflexible. Also, several field skirmishes showed that dust can go inside the gearbox easily through the openings of the gun body.

Thanks very much snowman :)

We contacted Deepfire almost a month earlier regarding the possible inclusion of their parts in our piston set evaluation effort. We have been told initially that they would like to join. And guess what? At the very last moment a tech buddy from Deepfire told us in a very polite manner that all the parts were shipped for meeting the demand of their distributor, with no sample unit left for evaluation. ??????

A small company with no PR and no evaluation unit - can such a setup produce products of consistent quality? We doubt it. Since their products are not cheap at all, why take the risk? The market is full of reliable alternatives from ICS, Systema, LayLax and the like anyway.

• test platform - do they perform differently on AEGs of different makes? 
• workmanship - are their relative performances gun-smith dependent?
• power level - do they render consistent performance across different power levels?

Evaluation of this sort is expected to be highly time consuming. We will try to get this done ASAP...