Anechoic Pip Squeak + Volquartsen Black Mamba Accuracy Test

Most suppressor reviews focus on sound, weight, length, materials, back pressure, or how a suppressor feels on the end of a firearm.

At DayAtTheRange, I wanted to ask a different question:

What happens to accuracy when we screw a suppressor onto an already accurate firearm?

That question started with our rimfire rifle testing. Now we’re expanding the project to pistols.

For our first pistol entry, I couldn’t think of a better host than my 6-inch Volquartsen Black Mamba. And making its first appearance in the DayAtTheRange accuracy database is the olive-drab-green Anechoic Pip Squeak.

Before we get into the numbers, there is one important point I want to make:

This is NOT a suppressor-versus-suppressor competition.

I’m not trying to crown a winner or build a list ranking suppressors from best to worst.

Instead, I’m interested in something I think is considerably more useful:

How does a particular firearm and ammunition combination perform with a suppressor compared with its own unsuppressed—or in this case muzzle-brake-equipped—baseline?

And our first pistol test produced some fascinating results.

Watch the Full Test

The complete range session with the Volquartsen Black Mamba and Anechoic Pip Squeak can be seen here:

The video shows what happened at the range. This article goes deeper into the numbers.

The Test Platform

For this experiment, I wanted a pistol capable of producing genuinely good groups. If we’re trying to detect small changes caused by adding a suppressor, the firearm itself needs to be capable of showing those differences.

Our host was:

Volquartsen Black Mamba

• 6-inch barrel
• Rimfire pistol
• Muzzle brake used for the baseline configuration
• Anechoic Pip Squeak installed for the suppressed configuration

The Black Mamba has more than enough accuracy potential to make this an interesting test platform.

And the Pip Squeak certainly looks at home on the end of it—especially in olive drab green.

But we’re DayAtTheRange.

Looking good isn’t enough.

We need targets. We need measurements. And we need data.

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Four Ammunition Choices: From $5 to $13

I also wanted ammunition to become part of the experiment.

Rather than selecting one premium load and calling it a day, I chose four different .22 LR loads at four approximate price levels:

This gives us everything from inexpensive CCI Standard Velocity to ammunition specifically marketed toward pistol competition.

And it gave us another question to explore:

Would every ammunition react the same way when the suppressor was installed?

As you’ll see, the answer was a definite no.

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How the Test Was Conducted

I wanted both 5-shot and 10-shot data.

That matters because five rounds can sometimes produce an impressive group that doesn’t tell the entire story. Increasing the sample to ten shots gives the ammunition and firearm more opportunities to expose dispersion.

For each ammunition, I collected group-size data with the Black Mamba in two configurations:

Muzzle Brake Only

and

Anechoic Pip Squeak Installed

Groups were measured in inches.

The percentage figures below compare the Anechoic group against that ammunition’s corresponding muzzle-brake-only group.

For the purposes of this article:

Positive percentage = smaller group with the suppressor

Negative percentage = larger group with the suppressor

This is important because we’re not comparing SK against CCI or Aguila against CCI.

Each ammunition is being compared against itself.

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The Complete Results

Now things get interesting.

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CCI Standard Velocity — $5

CCI Standard Velocity provided one of the most interesting baselines of the entire test.

Without the suppressor, the Black Mamba produced an outstanding:

.262-inch 5-shot group.

With the Anechoic installed, that became:

.288 inch.

That’s only .026 inch larger, although mathematically it represents approximately a 9.9% increase in group size.

The 10-shot groups told a similar story:

Muzzle Brake: .789″

Anechoic: .915″

That’s approximately a 16.0% increase in group size.

So CCI-SV favored the muzzle-brake-only configuration in both samples.

But there’s another way of looking at this result.

The Black Mamba was already shooting CCI Standard Velocity extraordinarily well. A .262-inch five-shot group didn’t leave much room for improvement.

Most importantly, this result immediately demonstrates something about our test:

Installing the suppressor does not automatically produce smaller groups.

That’s going to become important when we get to SK Pistol Match.

 

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Aguila Target Competition — $8

Aguila gave us one of the biggest five-shot changes of the test.

With the muzzle brake:

1.374 inches

With the Anechoic:

.913 inch

That’s a 33.6% reduction in group size.

If we stopped at five shots, that would be a dramatic result.

But this is exactly why I wanted 10-shot data.

With ten shots:

Muzzle Brake: 1.204″

Anechoic: 1.191″

That’s only about a 1.1% reduction.

Essentially, the two 10-shot groups were extremely close.

And that is valuable information.

The five-shot sample suggests the combination has potential, but the larger 10-shot sample did not reproduce anything close to the same magnitude of improvement.

This is a perfect example of why I’m hesitant to draw sweeping conclusions from one small group.

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SK Pistol Match — $10

And then we got to SK Pistol Match.

This one got my attention.

With the muzzle brake installed, the five-shot group measured:

.842 inch

After installing the Anechoic Pip Squeak:

.593 inch

That’s a 29.6% reduction in group size.

That’s impressive.

But would ten shots support it?

The muzzle-brake 10-shot group measured:

1.349 inches

With the Anechoic:

.998 inch

That’s a 26.0% reduction in group size.

Now we have something much more interesting.

The five-shot sample improved by 29.6%.

The ten-shot sample improved by 26.0%.

The magnitude of the change remained remarkably similar even after doubling the number of shots.

Of all four ammunition choices tested, SK Pistol Match showed the clearest and most consistent positive response to the Anechoic Pip Squeak.

That doesn’t mean the Pip Squeak will make every pistol shoot SK Pistol Match better.

It means that on this day, with this Volquartsen Black Mamba, this suppressor and this ammunition, the combination produced substantially smaller groups in both of our samples.

And that is exactly the kind of relationship this project is designed to uncover.

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CCI Pistol Match Competition — $13

If SK demonstrated why ammunition/suppressor combinations are interesting, CCI Pistol Match reinforced that point from the opposite direction.

Our muzzle-brake-only five-shot group was excellent:

.397 inch

With the Anechoic:

.590 inch

Mathematically, that’s a 48.6% increase in group size.

That’s a large percentage.

But percentages need context.

The actual difference between those two groups was .193 inch.

And when we increased the sample to ten rounds, the difference became considerably smaller.

Muzzle Brake: .955″

Anechoic: 1.000″

That’s a difference of only .045 inch, or approximately 4.7%.

Again, our ten-shot data changed the story.

The five-shot sample strongly favored the muzzle-brake configuration, but the larger 10-shot groups were much closer together.

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If price alone predicted accuracy, we might expect both lines to generally move downward as we went from $5 ammunition to $13 ammunition.

That’s clearly not what happened.

The least expensive ammunition in the test, CCI Standard Velocity at approximately $5 per box, produced the smallest five-shot group in both configurations: .262″ with the muzzle brake and .288″ with the Anechoic Pip Squeak.

Even more interesting, the $10 SK Pistol Match and $13 CCI Pistol Match Competition were almost identical with the suppressor installed—.593″ versus .590″.

And when we increase the sample to ten shots, the picture doesn’t suddenly become a simple price ladder either:

Once again, the approximately $5 CCI Standard Velocity produced the smallest absolute 10-shot group in both configurations.

But here’s the distinction I think is particularly important for the article:

CCI Standard Velocity produced the smallest absolute groups, while SK Pistol Match showed the strongest and most consistent improvement after adding the Anechoic Pip Squeak.

Those are two very different measurements of performance.

The 10-Shot Groups May Tell the Bigger Story

This is probably my favorite part of the experiment.

Look only at the five-shot percentages and the swings appear enormous:

CCI-SV: -9.9%

Aguila: +33.6%

SK: +29.6%

CCI Pistol Match: -48.6%

Now look at what happened with ten shots:

CCI-SV: -16.0%

Aguila: +1.1%

SK: +26.0%

CCI Pistol Match: -4.7%

That’s fascinating.

The dramatic five-shot changes for Aguila and CCI Pistol Match largely disappeared once we looked at ten shots.

SK Pistol Match didn’t.

It went from a 29.6% improvement with five shots to a 26.0% improvement with ten shots.

That consistency makes the SK result the one I most want to investigate further.

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More Expensive Ammunition Didn’t Automatically Mean Better Results

There’s another lesson hiding in this data.

Our ammunition ranged from approximately $5 to $13.

Yet the $13 ammunition didn’t automatically produce the best suppressed result.

Nor did the inexpensive ammunition automatically perform poorly.

CCI Standard Velocity produced the smallest muzzle-brake-only five-shot group of the entire experiment at just .262 inch.

Meanwhile, SK Pistol Match produced the most consistent improvement after adding the Anechoic.

That is why ammunition testing matters.

A price tag can’t tell you what a particular firearm is going to prefer.

And now I’m beginning to wonder whether the same applies to the firearm + ammunition + suppressor combination.

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The Anechoic Didn’t Simply Make the Black Mamba More Accurate

This may be the most important conclusion from the entire test.

The suppressor did not simply make every group smaller.

And I actually like that result.

If every group magically became smaller when the suppressor went on, it would be easy to make a flashy claim.

But that’s not what the targets showed.

CCI Standard Velocity produced somewhat larger groups.

Aguila produced a substantially smaller five-shot group but virtually identical 10-shot performance.

CCI Pistol Match produced a larger five-shot group, while its 10-shot results were much closer.

And SK Pistol Match produced substantial reductions in both.

That suggests something considerably more interesting than:

“Suppressors improve accuracy.”

Instead, my working hypothesis coming out of this test is:

Suppressor accuracy may be an interaction between the suppressor, host firearm and ammunition rather than simply an inherent characteristic of the suppressor itself.

One test can’t prove that.

But it certainly gives us a reason to keep collecting data.

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This Is Why DayAtTheRange Isn’t Ranking Suppressors

As this database grows, I want to continually reinforce this point.

This is not Suppressor A versus Suppressor B.

There are simply too many variables for me to find that approach as interesting as what we’re doing here.

Change the host firearm and you may change the result.

Change the barrel and you may change the result.

Change the ammunition and—as this test appears to demonstrate—you may change the result.

Instead, I want every suppressor to face a much more meaningful opponent:

The firearm’s own established baseline.

Shoot the firearm without the suppressor.

Measure it.

Install the suppressor.

Shoot it again under the same testing protocol.

Measure it.

Then ask:

What changed?

That’s the DayAtTheRange suppressor accuracy project.

Rifle Accuracy Meets Pistol Accuracy

This experiment also represents an expansion of the original DayAtTheRange rimfire suppressor accuracy project.

We started by asking these questions with precision rifles.

Now we’re asking them with pistols.

That’s important because a suppressor that behaves one way on a precision rifle isn’t necessarily going to interact identically with a pistol.

Different barrel lengths, different hosts and different ammunition give us more data points.

Over time, I want the DayAtTheRange database to become less about individual reviews and more about identifying patterns.

Does a particular combination consistently preserve baseline accuracy?

Are certain ammunition types more sensitive to suppressor installation?

Do pistol hosts behave differently than rifle hosts?

Do five-shot improvements survive when we shoot ten?

Those are the questions I’m interested in answering.

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Final Thoughts: The SK Result Deserves Another Look

The first outing with the Anechoic Pip Squeak produced exactly the kind of data I hoped this project would uncover.

Not a predetermined conclusion.

Not four ammunition types all doing the same thing.

Questions.

CCI Standard Velocity showed us that an already exceptionally small group doesn’t necessarily become smaller with a suppressor.

Aguila showed us why a dramatic five-shot result needs to be viewed alongside a larger sample.

CCI Pistol Match demonstrated the same lesson from the opposite direction.

And SK Pistol Match gave us the result that deserves further investigation.

.842″ → .593″ over five shots.

1.349″ → .998″ over ten shots.

That’s approximately 29.6% and 26.0% smaller, respectively.

Two different sample sizes.

Same direction.

Very similar magnitude.

That’s not where I end the investigation.

That’s where I start asking more questions.

I’d like to repeat some of these combinations, increase the number of groups, test additional pistol hosts and eventually put more ammunition through the same protocol.

Because ultimately, I’m not interested in telling you which suppressor “wins.”

I’m interested in building enough measurable data that we can begin understanding something much more useful:

What actually happens to rimfire accuracy when we add a suppressor?

The targets are going to help us answer that question.

And the Anechoic Pip Squeak and Volquartsen Black Mamba have officially given us our first pistol data point.

Stay tuned, Rangefans. We’re just getting started.

Semper Fi.