Salvimar Predathor Vuoto 100

Salvimar predathor is way cheaper than Mares options. Quality built. 5 cm more or less do not make a huge difference. Also having a regular predathor I can use one as a backup and they can share accessories and parts.

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I have the predathor vuoto 115. Pumped up to "quite easy to load" it goes straight through small fish like mangrove snapper (they end up on the line not the spear). It has a long range and lots of power. The gun is not loud like most people say about pneumatics, however, I have no experience with other pneumatics so cant compare, sure fish right next to the one I shot scramble but thats normal even with a pole spear, they are back in range in no time. I've been out with mine about 20-30 times in 2 years and haven't had to pump it up more or anything, I just rinse it with freshwater after use and make sure not to let the tip touch sand on the beach. I doubt I would buy any other gun for myself in the future, this one is perfect. I haven't tried to shoot pelagics because I'm not at that level yet but I'm fairly certain it can handle those, especially if I pump it up more to the recommended pressure.

Diving Gecko said:

If your shaft is 7mm and you want to go to 8mm, you will have to get a tail end - or tang as they are also called - with a bigger outer diameter. And then, you will also need a new internal shock absorber for the Vuoto muzzle as the regular one will not allow the bigger shaft tail to pass through, unless you can drill the original one out. That could possibly work. I might be able to measure both of them for you in a day or two, if you need it, to check if the only difference is indeed the bore diameter of the shock absorber.
Here it is in the catalogue:
View attachment 43946

As for the tail ends and their internal thread, all the ones I have are M6x1, that goes for Mares, Salvi, Seac, Devoto and Sigalsub no matter what the shaft thickness is so I think that is as close to an industry standard as you can get.
I made the sketch below for a local machinist who cuts my spears down when needed and it has worked each and every time:
View attachment 43945

As for the front thread for a screw-in tip, it is sometimes m7x1 (most often?) but I have seen M6x1, too.

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I remember someone asking about the difference in shock absorbers for the Vuoto muzzles and I said, I would measure them but didn't get around to it until someone on another forum asked the same thing.
So, here's a bit of C+P'ing of what I finally figured out:

First, I'll share this pic that I am not sure where I got from but hope it's OK that I repost it. It shows, what I believe is a prototype of the Vuoto muzzle, but the annotations I am not sure who made. Possibly Popgun Pete. But most importantly, it clearly shows where the shock absorber sits in the muzzle:


Only real difference is that the shock absorber (called 'shock absorber anvil' in this pic) is a tough plastic in the production runs and not made of metal.

Now, on to the measurements. In all pics the shock absorber for 7mm shafts is to the left and the one for 8mm to the right:

In all their simplistic glory, they look like this and could easily be mistaken for being exactly the same:

(I took some o-rings off of these shock absorbers to make them easier to measure)

The only real difference is the size of the inside bore, kinda visible to the naked eye (smaller bore on the left):


With calipers, the smaller bore shock absorber has an inner diameter of 8.5mm, the bigger one is 1mm bigger:


They are both the same length. But the real question was whether they share the same dimensions regarding the o-ring seat, and they do:


So, to conclude, I personally think it would be an OK approach to just enlarge the bore for bigger shafts if one needed to. That said, it's a three Euro spare part if I recall correctly, but that only matters if you can actually get your hands on them. Easy enough if in Europe but could be tricky elsewhere.

it' s strange: normally, white parts (shocks absorbers) are made for 11mm barrel speargun (7mm shaft), and black parts for 13mm barrel guns (8mm shaft).
But yours are both black ?????

Nico66 said:

it' s strange: normally, white parts (shocks absorbers) are made for 11mm barrel speargun (7mm shaft), and black parts for 13mm barrel guns (8mm shaft).
But yours are both black ?????

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Both are black. Both are for 13mm barrel. One is for 7mm shaft, the other for 8mm.
Not sure there's a black and white rule...;-)


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you can check on the mares sten valve too : whites are for 11mm barrel, black for 13mm !

EDIT : I just didn't know there were two type of shock aborbers for 13mm barrel kit. I use only the 8mm shaft shock absorber, even if my shaft is a 7mm one

You could certainly be right. Come to think about it, I don't have a single traditional gun in 11mm. The only 11mm gun I have is the Sporasub One Air and can't recall how its shock absorber looks


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13mm valve (black plastic part)
11mm and 13mm shock absorbers

I don’t have my sten 110cm (11mm barrels), but the inner parts were withe!

I see that the Salvimar "Dark Side" Predathor is now available as a 99.9 model!! It is listed as being new in the 2018 catalogue.

popgun pete said:

I see that the Salvimar "Dark Side" Predathor is now available as a 99.9 model!! It is listed as being new in the 2018 catalogue.

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What do you mean by "99.9 model"? price?

stefpix said:

What do you mean by "99.9 model"? price?

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It is the size of the gun which is 100 cm, but someone in marketing probably thought 99.9 cm sounded better.

I'm in South China now and just pulled apart another spearo's Predathor. His nose cone and handle had double o-ring grooves - mine has single grooves. It's something I've only seen on a few of my Mirage parts and I also do it on my own parts as often as I can:



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He is a strong guy and runs his 100 Predathor at 25 bar. This is his shock absorber:


It's something I've seen before: In my Vuoto muzzle that was on a Mirage running 28-30 bar (I think). I'm honestly disappointed to see it happening at 25bar in a gun Salvimar says can operate up to 30bar. Or maybe they just mean, it likely won't explode under 30bar...

The broken o-rings had jammed the absorber stuck so I was worried the piston had cracked but it had survived.

I'm fairly certain it's the result of accumulative impacts rather than just 1-2 above a certain threshold. Here's why: Today I pool tested a Predathor 130 at 30bar, even 32 probably. Yeah, I cheated and topped it up from a scuba tank after loading it at 20bar;-). The reason is that I wanted it to mimic the long Mirage I am trying to make.
When I took that Predathor 130 apart just now, I expected to see broken shock absorber o-rings but they were fine. It's not an apples to apples test as the other gun is a 100 but at least, they are both shooting 8mm spears.


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.......and how does the 130 perform at 30bar +?[emoji51]


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grantl said:

.......and how does the 130 perform at 30bar +?[emoji51]


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Hard to say, really. Not many firm conclusions coz I couldn't keep it on target. My hand really doesn't feel there's much support in that handle design. Penetration wise it's solid. But even at 20bar it had more penetration than a C4 Urukay 120 with three rubbers.
I was off to the left on all shots but so was my friend so it was quite consistent in its inaccuracy;-). I think it can be solved.
But I'm also beginning to think that 7.5mm might be a happier medium for the bigger guns. That's just speculation though.
Sadly, I only had in it in the pool for one session and I can't repeat that anytime soon.

Majd often talks about how humbling pool testing is. But it's also incredibly hard work and things take forever. When the gun isn't shooting as you expect you really wanna change as many things as you can between shots but that's not how to do it. You change ONE parameter only at a time. That's the only way to figure out what's wrong. So, it just takes a lot of time.
Honestly, I have more questions than answers right now;-)


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I think you guys who shoot Vuotos at higher pressures should check your shock absorbers. Also, I was not surprised to see a bit of corrosion on the piston. Whether water creeps past the front seal in normal shooting or it's because its owner shot it a few times after the vacuum seal had gone bust, I don't know. I do know that my Seac Hunter piston of the same type had it happen in normal wet barrel use.




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The rubber sleeve type shock absorbers don't give any trouble. The idea behind using multiple "O” rings is that the compressing rings under load have somewhere to spread out as they are being squashed. Problem is the water in-between them is incompressible, so the "O" rings get busted eventually. The rubber sleeve types just expand into the annular gap beneath them.

Diving Gecko said:

Hard to say, really. Not many firm conclusions coz I couldn't keep it on target. My hand really doesn't feel there's much support in that handle design. Penetration wise it's solid. But even at 20bar it had more penetration than a C4 Urukay 120 with three rubbers.
I was off to the left on all shots but so was my friend so it was quite consistent in its inaccuracy;-). I think it can be solved.



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I’ve found my Vuotos to be extremely accurate when hunting but I’ve never shot it in a pool so don’t ‘really’ know if it’s ‘off’ or not.
Think I’d be a bit wary personally of shooting targets in case I dent my confidence with it. Im so confident with the Vuoto s and very rarely miss anything with it but I bet unexpected results on targets in the pool could change all that!
Really interesting to hear how the power compares to the C4. I run my Vuoto 100 & darkside 115 @20 bar and have often wondered how the power compares to high power band guns.
Hopefully you get this issue resolved - looking forward to seeing more of the test results/conclusions.


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grantl said:

I’ve found my Vuotos to be extremely accurate when hunting but I’ve never shot it in a pool so don’t ‘really’ know if it’s ‘off’ or not.
Think I’d be a bit wary personally of shooting targets in case I dent my confidence with it. Im so confident with the Vuoto s and very rarely miss anything with it but I bet unexpected results on targets in the pool could change all that!
Really interesting to hear how the power compares to the C4. I run my Vuoto 100 & darkside 115 @20 bar and have often wondered how the power compares to high power band guns.
Hopefully you get this issue resolved - looking forward to seeing more of the test results/conclusions.


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I hear you. I had very good mileage fish wise on my most recent long Mirage - and I don't wanna test it and upset myself, haha.

Even if I wanted to, there's some very practical issues with pool testing for me. Spearguns live in a grey area in terms of legislation in China but it's much less hassle when with a local. So, this latest pool test was with a local friend in his city where he used his network to get us some pool time. But... he's about 1300km from me;-(.

I shot both left and a bit low. My friend shot mostly left and not so low with the same gun. My theory is that I think when people shoot their bandguns they tend to aim a bit high naturally. Like lining up the top of a loading pad (which often sits higher than the track) with the tip of the spear. I speculate that my friend aimed a bit high from habit.
On airguns it feels more natural to aim along the top of the barrel. So, I think the low shooting might be a mix of some natural shaft drop and the rest might be from muzzle whip. At least I think I see 1-2 inches of rise right about the time the shaft is just about to leave the muzzle.
If I had to hazard a guess as to the cause of the rise, I'd say it's a mix of the increasingly buoyant gun-sans-shaft rising and the recoil forcing the muzzle up.
Comparing our handles to modern guns like Pathos, C4, Abellan, etc our handles actually sit quite low. It's less of an issue because we have way less recoil, but I think it's definitely still there.
And since we are talking recoil, it's now clear to me that - in bandguns - a large part of that is from the bands themselves. When my friend first shot my Mirage 125 in Indonesia he literally thought he hadn't fired it (he shot a three-banded Abellan on that trip). In the pool, we definitely felt it had less recoil than the double-banded 100-120 guns we also shot.

Left shooting could come from the handle moving in the hand during the shot. To rule out a bent shaft, I shot it both flopper up and flopper down and no change. I even shot the shaft without shooting line and the result was the same. When I shot the gun with two hands, I had less left shift. As I mentioned, the Salvi grip doesn't fit me well, with quite a gap high up. I feel, even when gripping it tight, that it can move quite easily.
I'll be customizing my handle and lifting it as high as I can on my next gun.

As for size, a 130 is about the length of a 115-120 bandgun (or a 110 Abellan).

(From the top; Denton 110, Rob Allen 120, Predathor 130, EPS 115).

We shot that 120 Rob Allen, too. Penetration wise against the airgun at 20 bar, not even a contest. If I get the left shift dialed out of the 130, I don't see much that can touch it in the same size. That said, it needs to go up against a perfectly tuned Denton 110 or a pimped Pathos. That would be an interesting shoot-out.

Video also showed three wraps of mono coming off the release without a hitch and, of course, no "band tangles". It may not sound like much but it's not that rare an occurrence on bandguns and oftentimes the spearo probably doesn't even realize why the shot was off.

Loading the long 130 you may ask...? I'm tiny at 1.70m and it's a non issue.
In lieu of recent discussions; extended loaders can be as simple as this;


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