Planet Eclipse EMEK MG100 – Behind the Scenes
Today we proudly present the first installment of our new series Behind the Scenes. Here we will give you a look behind the scenes in the future, with exclusive photos, interviews about new products and much more.
Today we start with Ledz with whom we talked about the new EMEK MG100.
So.. A Planet Eclipse Magfed marker… wow!! We didn’t expect Planet Eclipse to enter the Magfed World. Tell us more.
Ledz:
It’s a little strange for us but people seem to think that we only make High End tournament markers and Hate everything else, which is not true at all. 
Paintball, in all of its forms, is an amazing sport. I started playing with Splatmasters back in 1986 and that’s when I fell in love with Paintball, so I’ve been through pretty much all of Paintballer different formats including Magfed.
Most current Magfed markers seem to lack in the performance and reliability department. They seem full of compromises. So we have listened to (and watched) Magfed ballers to see what they like and hate and what the Magfed players wants. Once we had that info we felt we could do a pretty good job at making a Magfed marker. Magfed isn’t something new on our radar at all, but it’s something we were not ready to get into until now.
Why now then?
Ledz:
With the success of the GMEK frame and now the EMEK we knew we had a winning platform to work on for our Magfed project. We wanted our first ‘toe dipping’ project into Magfed to be Mechanical so once we knew that part was AMAZING it made the transition over to a Magfed platform make a lot more sense.
Is the EMEK MG100 mag fed and loader fed? Is so, why is that?
Ledz:
We decided to make a Magfed as well as a Loader fed marker in one neat package. The reason for this is that we wanted customers to have the option. 
I have personally been to big games when there was a breakaway game in a cool area that was just for Magfed players and I didn’t have an option to go and play so I missed out and we don’t want anyone to miss out if we can help it. The EMEK MG100 can’t be switched from Magfed to Loader fed on the fly.
But it is a very quick swap over that can be done in the safe zone with the removal of a single screw. If you’re a diehard Magfed player then leave it set-up as Magfed but now you have the option of going loader fed if you wanted to. Having options isn’t a bad thing. Importantly, the EMEK MG100 hasn’t compromised its performance or reliability in any way with this switchable set-up.
Why have decided to go with Dye Mags instead of making your own mags?
Ledz:
We have been looking at Magfed on and off for several years now. We did some testing, got involved in some Magfed communities, listened and then decided that in 
our humble opinion the best mags on the market were the Dye Dam mags. So we spoke with Dye, they got involved at the very early stage of development, supplying drawings for their magwell design, and we went from there.
As I’ve already said this is our first rodeo in Magfed and we know the Dye Dam mags work well, are constructed well, priced well and readily available around the world. Lots of ticks there. Before anyone asks, NO, the Dye Dam boxmag will not work on the EMEK EMG100. The Dye boxmag uses an electronic interface with the Dye Dam to operate and our EMEK MG100 is mechanical, so there are no electronics to control the Boxmag with.
Is the EMEK MG100 PALs loader compatible?
Ledz:
Yes it is. This is another excellent feature of the EMEK MG100. With the very inexpensive PALs loader you can still go and shoots ropes at a Big game, as a walk-on or wherever. Makes it easier to justify having a loader languishing in your bag if it only costs you a few Euros and works like a dream!.
The HPA tank location is going to be something that divide the Magfed Community.
Ledz:
Yes we know this and it’s something that we have talked about at length here at Planet HQ. We don’t want to bring a bad product to market and we also want to give the customers what they want. However, we are not going to bring an AR15 replica to market.
So we sat down and listed all of the good and bad things about the current Magfed offering on the market. We looked at the features of each example, talked to people and listened. We then worked on making the best possible Magfed marker we could. In this case we had to stay with the bottom grip ASA set-up so we could get to market in a realistic timeframe.
We could have developed a tank coming out of the back of the EMEK MG100 but that would have taken a lot more time and a huge amount of investment. When we started the project we didn’t even know how good a product we could make or even if there was a real demand for us to make one. So using current production components and changing as few variables as possible was always going to be our preferred route. Turns out we can make a pretty good Magfed marker :-)
What makes the EMEK MG100 so good then?
Ledz:
Have you got a fresh coffee? LOL… I won’t bore you too much with the performance of the Gamma Core drive train that is the engine of the EMEK MG100. It’s just a brilliant, super-efficient, super-reliable platform to start with. 
The things we hear about Magfed markers that we wanted to improve on were things like Paint handling, for both round ball and First Strike/Shaped Projectiles. Number of shots out of the small 13ci tanks.
Reliability of the marker in general and the mag loading interface. We think we have significantly improve in all of these areas. Our Beta testers are AMAZED at the EMEK MG100 shooting both round ball and First Strike rounds and are getting about 220 shots at 280 FPS with round ball out of 13ci Tank with 3000psi fill. We are not seeing any first strike loading or flipping issues. The MG100 is also super quite compared to a lot other Magfed markers on the market.
Performance is our number one priority in this project and I think the design team have nailed it. If you’re not sure then you need to go and shoot it…
Don’t tell anyone but we have a cool idea for a really nice stock :-)
Stay tuned
Thank you very much Ledz for taking the time to answer our questions.