Muffle that Hopper!

The harsh rattling sound of a half-filled hopper always seems to give you away at the wrong time.  Silence may be golden, but it’s hard to achieve.  Let’s first try for “muffled” and “easy.”

One word: Moleskin

Look around in the camping or footcare sections of any sporting goods or major retail store. Moleskin already has an adhesive backing and is strong enough to stick even while wet.
They come in sheets that are meant to be cut in order to get the shape you need for a blister and so you won’t have a problem snipping the edges to fit your hopper’s internal contours.

Crack open your hopper (not literally of course), line the insides with moleskin, and you’re good. Save the snippets for your gearbag. You never know when you might need it for the real purpose during a scenario game.

Materials Needed:

Hopper
Screwdriver
2 Packets of Dr. Scholl’s Moleskin (they come 3 sheets to a packet. I used about 4 1/2 sheets to coat the inside of my A-5’s hopper)
X-Acto Knife
Scissors (Optional. I had them handy, but never used them. The X-Acto was all I ended up using)
Chopping board

Procedure

Use the screwdriver to remove the bindings of your hopper. Make sure that as you separate the halves, you take a moment to look at how the lid and spring are assembled. It will help you when it’s time to put the lid assembly back in when you are finished.

Before peeling off the adhesive backing, premeasure what the moleskin sheet is going to look like. Cover as much area as you can, but make sure you don’t coat the area right around the funnel at the bottom of the hopper.
Leaving this area clear serves two purposes:
1. It ensures that there is no chance that a ball will get clogged at the feeder neck end of the hopper by having that extra bit of moleskin layering making the opening too tight for a paintball to fit through.
2. If a ball ever gets chopped, you won’t have an absorbent layer of Moleskin right there soaking it up.

Once you’ve eyeballed how the portion you’re covering is going to look, lightly score the moleskin with the X-Acto knife…drawing a line at the portions you’ll have to cut away to make a snug fit.
Next, remove the moleskin from the hopper and place it on the chopping board. Using the score lines as a guide, apply some pressure this time and cut off the pieces you won’t need to cover the surface you’re working with. Make as few cuts as possible, leaving pieces that can be used to cover other areas.

Once you have your piece cut, peel off the adhesive backing and apply it to the surface area. Start with adhering one edge of the moleskin and slowly working your way across to the opposite end that you started from. This helps eliminate air bubbles. You want to get every bit of the adhesive you can snug against the surface of the hopper, so go slowly and try to press the air bubbles out of the moleskin as much as possible.
If you’ve ever done any wallpapering, it’s probably a familiar process.

Take your time and work your way from the bottom area of the hopper towards the top end where the lid is. Use the largest pieces possible at the bottom, and save the snippets for areas along the “roof” and sides of the hopper’s interior. Let’s face it…wear and tear on your hopper might eventually lead to pieces of moleskin to lose their adhesive properties. The portions at the bottom of the hopper will probably see the most wear, so having large surface area pieces there ensure that small snippets are less likely to come loose and clog the funnel end.

Once you’ve gotten the large areas completed, doublecheck that there are no portions of moleskin that overlap with the edges where the hopper sides fit together. Trim any pieces that might overlap or otherwise prevent the two halves of the hopper’s body from fitting together snugly.

When coating the inside, keep in mind that not every square millimeter of surface area needs to be covered. Look for areas that have uneven surfaces. Make sure that these areas are covered, as they are more likely to cause a rattle.

Closing it back up
When you are satisfied, close up your hopper. Fit the two halves together without the screws. Eyeball the outside and make sure that there are no small areas of moleskin protruding from between the halves. Go back and re-trim any portions that do poke through.

Replace the spring & lid, then put the two hopper halves together again. Doublecheck that the spring is doing its job before screwing the hopper together again.

I ended up having to use my X-Acto blade to help me re-set the spring onto the hopper lid. It took a little bit of fiddling with, but I eventually got it to re-seat before I put the two hopper body halves together.

Once finished, cover the bottom funnel with your hand, pour a couple handfuls of balls into the hopper, and shake it around a bit.

You’ll notice that there’s no longer a harsh, plastic sounding rattle. Yes, there’s still some noise, but it is a softer, muffled sound instead of a loud clatter. Rattle around the same amount of paint in one of your paint pods to get an idea of the difference.

If you do still hear some clattering sounds, you may have missed a spot. Keep rattling the balls around until you get an estimate of where inside the hopper it is coming from before you take the hopper apart again.