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SIG SAUER 556 SG556 Review


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Hello everyone, let me start this off by saying that I am madly in love with the SIG 556 since I first saw the real steal version. Since then I have been trolling the interwebs trying to find a decently priced airsoft version. Now I know KA has a couple versions out that are readily available at a bunch of stores, but I'm too cheap and my wife is not understanding enough (mostly the second one :P ) for me to shell out $400+ for one airsoft gun. I also know that, for the most part, you do get what you pay for in the airsoft world so I was skeptically optimistic when I found the CYMA / Cybergun version online. To say I was excited would be a vast understatement.

 

Unfortunately for me, by the time I was ready to purchase it, it was completely sold out everywhere. After spending almost a month searching everywhere, I found a retailer on eBay with one last one in stock and bought it. Unfortunately in the next few days they got back to me to tell me that it was damaged in their warehouse so they sent it back and have no idea when or even if they would get another. So after nearly another two weeks I found some random whole-in-the-wall place that had one last one in stock and ordered it. The next day I get a phone call telling me that the gun had been sold in store last morning a few hours before I purchased it online and they have no idea when or even if they would get more. FML. At this point I am thinking The universe is against me. I had already bought a rail system, a new stock and various other parts for this gun that I still don't own and apparently can't find anywhere. Well after trying to buy one online from a person and going back and forth with the seller for about a month to no avail, I finally found a refurbished one at Kapowwe, bought it and received it in about 5 days.

 

Now the purpose of my little mini rant above is just to illustrate a point that these are damn near impossible to find so if you ever find yourself wanting to buy one of these, plan on spending a bit of time looking (unless you get lucky ;) )

 

 

On to the review! (Please note, since my gun was a refurbished item, I do not know if everything is still in stock format. It looks like it to me, but I am not 100%)

 

 

 

Right out of the package; The gun comes with two SIGARMS labeled highcaps that have a clip that allows you to attach them together, along with a regular 1100mAh stick battery and el cheapo wall charger (that I have already thrown away so it is not in the picture).

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First Impression!

After I got past my little girl squeal of excitement over finally owning this gun, I was actually quite impressed with its build quality. The gun is quite heavy and is really solid. The stock wobbled on mine, but I found out it was because it was missing a screw:

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Luckily I had a screw in my parts box that had the right threads, it just needed trimming. After I replaced the missing screw there was no play in the stock at all. The metal body is really solid and heavy and actually has a nice feel and finish to it. The only problem I see is the charging handle/assembly; it seems a little wobbly and flimsy and because of the way the charging handle sticks out when you lay the rifle on the right side, nearly all its weight is on the charging handle which could cause problems in the future. Also notice that the charging handle is not correct to the real rifle.

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The stock is a normal LE type M4 stock with a SIGARMS trademark on it and it includes a rubber butt pad that is removable. Once the pad is removed, it allows access to a door to what appears to be storage for AA batteries (if you look at the picture of the stock, there is a small circular tube that is parallel to the stock tube and ends right before the lever. Thats where it is on the stock.). The interesting thing about this stock is that it does not attach like a normal AEG style (with a screw into the gearbox) but rather the tube screws into the body ala RS and GBB rifles. This shouldn't cause any problems however if all you want to change is from the LE style to a crane stock or CTR because I was able to fit a CA crane stock on the buffer tube without any problems and it was nice and tight without any wobble.

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Now one thing that I have noticed about the real steal 556 is that a lot of people complain about the standard handguards being weak/flimsy/###### so I was a little hesitant about what this would be like but they actually turned out pretty nice. They are nice and solid without any wobble and have a nice rubberized feel that is on the stock as well. It also includes pretty much as many rails as you would need with a small rail on either side at the front and a full size rail on the bottom.You can confidently mount a grip on this rail without any worry about the rail moving/slipping/shifting/etc. The only thing to realize is that due to the width of the handguards you will not be able to mount Magpul's AFG on the rail.

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The handguard is also where the battery is stored and the number one thing everyone wants to know is what size of battery can I fit? Well, you can fit any type of AK style stick battery above the outer barrel. Now I only have LiPos so I tried to see what would fit and the below picture shows the LiPos that will fit. You can also fit the nunchuck style LiPos as well (as long as the cells aren't too wide) I just dont have any. I tried to fit a wider 1800mAh LiPo and it was a no-go so you have to stay with the stick style batteries (LiPo or otherwise) which is kind of a bummer as those are typically the most expensive kind and with lower capacity (compared to what else is available).

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The sights are the other aspect of this gun that is really disappointing. On the real gun, the front sight is removable and there are various aftermarket sights available to replace it with. On this gun, the front sight is built into the gasblock and is definitely not removable. Which is a bummer because that means I will have to hack it off in order to finish my future plan for this. The back sight is built into the rear of the top rail and folds down all stealthy like when not in use. Unfortunately, it does not fold down as nicely or as completely as I would like it to and if you attempt to install a different rear sight in the rail position where the folding sight is you will scratch up the folding sight (unfortunately I forgot to get a individually picture of the rear sight but I will try to get one later and edit it in). One of the first things I did was completely remove the folding sight because I have actual iron sights I want to use on this gun. The gas block on this gun is slightly confusing to me as I wasn't able to figure out how to take it off when I tried to earlier. When I have more time to I will try again, but the good news is that it is rock solid and the sling point is built into the gasblock and again rock solid (as opposed to the MP5 front sight sling attachment point that are pretty flimsy).

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Internals!

Well that's it for the externals so here is a picture of the gun broken down into major pieces:

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The gearbox is a Ver3 with a special motor mount (instead of a cage) so you should be able to replace it if you so desire as long as you keep the motor mount. The hopup unit looks like a G3 type hopup but with a special feeding tube that looks like a heaven for jams and misfeeds but surprisingly is not at all. The motor is your standard ACM without any labels but is a medium length motor. The grip is again proprietary so no hope in changing it, but it is actually surprisingly comfortable. Of course its a bit big so if you have small hands it might not be so comfy for you.

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Here is the Hopup unit taken apart.

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And here is the gearbox where you can see the gears for the selector plate. They are on both sides due to the ambi-selector the rifle has and has a nice touch that I've never seen before. If you look where the crescent shaped gear and round gear meet you can see a line on each gear, which is a nice touch when you put it back together so that you know how to line up the gears the correct way everytime.

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(A more thorough breakdown of the gearbox will come at a later date when some of the parts I ordered come in)

 

 

 

 

Performance!

FPS

397, 394, 397, 398, 392, 396, 392, 392, 393, 393, 394, 401, 401, 399, 401, 402, 399, 399, 398, 402

 

Mean: 397 FPS

Standard Deviation: 3.5

 

ROF

19.9 rps with a 11.1v LiPo

 

This is one aspect that the rifle pleasantly surprised me. The FPS was relatively constant and I never had a single misfeed or jam as I fired a hundred or so rounds. The included hicaps work well and feed without a hitch, but I'm not big on hicaps so the first thing I did was see if my EMAGs fit and I'm glad to say they do and they feed perfectly. (I will try it with some other PMAGs I have, both M-version and previous, as well as some other midcaps such as G&P and MAG at a later date). I will also check the ROF with the included stick battery and with one of my 7.4v LiPos as well for some comparison.

 

 

 

 

And finally, what is to come! I have the King Arms rail for their 556 that I will try to install on this (I already know this will be a long process that will require some cutting and a lot of sanding) as well as the UBR and some other various bits and bobs. I also have a EOTech 553 in the mail for this and am planning to get a AWS Stealth for this along with some other various internal upgrades. Pics will follow.biggrin.gif

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Keep us updated. I'm very interested in this gun as I love sig's to death but hated that no one else used them for swapping mags with team mates. This changes it all! The gearbox, motor mount, pistol grip, and hop-up unit are all typical SIG 55x series parts.

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Looks great! But not too cool that the gun does not feed the last 10 bb's or so because of the extra long feed ramp. :mellow: But thats not a biggie to me. The hopup unit itself looks like a 100% sig55(0,1,2) type, but im not sure.

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Yea it the original one. Its just your normal run of the mill M4 birdcage flash hider. It had an orange cap glued to the tip took some paint off when I took it off so thats why it looks beat up. On the plus side it is full metal.

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  • 1 month later...

I have no idea. The only thing I can think of is that this was a limited run that they did and once the sold their stock, that's it.That was why I have my mini rant in the first three paragraphs in my OP ;)

 

Your best bet is to search the boneyard section of airsoft sites or for very random toy sites that carry el cheapo cyma guns because some end up carrying some of the nicer cyma guns as well.

 

 

Sorry I haven't updated this yet; I keep waiting for AWS to release their Ver3 Stealth FET so that once I take this appart and crack it open, I can do everything all at once and not have to keep repeating things. ;)

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Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to do anything to this yet. I am hoping that next week that will change as I found someone parting out one of these guns and bought the body, barrel assembly and gearbox, so now if I mess anything up I have replacement parts ;) That was one of my biggest concerns; since this gun is damn near impossible to find, getting replacement parts would be impossible. I'm going to have to either grind the body or the rail to be able to install it because the body is a bit wider than the rail. The UBR stock I have has GBB threads which is what supposedly this has as well so we shall see.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well this took quite a bit more work than I expected. <_<

 

First, to get the stock on required some heavy grinding. The threads on the SIG did not match up to the threads on my UBR stock tube and, also, the threads on the SIG did not even go deep enough. So even if you could screw the stock on, it would have left about 4-5mm of the threads on the stock tube exposed. So I took my dremel to it and ground out the back of the SIG's stock adapter and ground down the threads some:

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*Note, I wasn't to worried about the damage to the cap because it would be covered by the UBR.

 

I also had to grind down the threads on the UBR's stock tube a bit as well and then I force threaded the stock onto the SIG's stock adapter; it took a lot of force and I doubt I am ever going to get it off. Well, after I got the stock tube on I realized I had another problem once I tried to put on the UBR. The UBR has a little nub that sticks out and is supposed to lock into that little hole (don't really know how better to explain this but just look at the pictures) on an M4 to keep the stock from spinning. Well the SIG's stock adapter did not have that hole so the UBR could not sit flush against it.So I busted out the dremel again and made a that hole so the stock could mount on properly.

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*Note, the part under the stock tube in this picture is what I am talking about

 

Alternatively, you could install one of these and not worry about drilling the additional hole as this provides enough of a recess.

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Once I got the stock on I turned my attention to the front end. The main problem with attaching the rail is that the body is too wide for the rail. So I ground down the inside of the rail on both sides where it slides over the body to widen it out.

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I realized that this would still not be enough so I had to take quite a bit off the body as well.

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In the above picture you can see the next problem I ran into; the part where the rail locks into the body (the bottom right part in the picture) was not 100% compatible with the rail so I had to grind it back a bit as well so that the rail could slide back far enough to mount the top rail. The corresponding part on the rail had to be modified as well as it had a block that protruded from the side to lock into the body. Well that was not at the right height so it would have been impossible to put the body pin in as it lifted the rail too high and didn't line up the holes properly. So I took that block completely off.

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Next I had to modify the gas block a little and take just a little material off the top of the inside as it was causing the top rail to sit just a little too low. After doing that I realized that I had to take a little bit (about 2-3mm) off the top rail of the body, as well as a little bit off some block at the front of and underneath the top rail, so that the handguard's top rail could fit on. You can see what I had to take off on the right side of this picture:

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*Note that the top rail of the gun and the top rail of the handguards did not match up; the handguard rail was about 1-2mm higher. Due to my optics setup this is not really noticeable on mine but if you do something else it can be pretty noticeable.

 

All in all, it took me about 4 hours to finally get the stock and handguards mounted on this :o . So it is possible, just be sure to give yourself enough time and have patience so that you don't screw it up beyond repair. After all is said and done, I'm quite happy with the results:

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*Oh yea, I also took off the front sight. Since it is built into the gas block I had to grind it off...

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Alrighty, I finally had the chance to break open the gearbox and take a look at some guts!

Externals:

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Here is the gearbox split open:

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And some individual parts.

Spring guide - very underwhelming <_<

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Switch Assembly

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*Notice arcing marks - needs a MOSFET pronto

 

 

Cylinder, piston and tappet - again, really underwhelming:

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Gearset:

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Boogers:

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As you can see, the internals seem to be not so wonderful. However, a member of my local site has had one for about a year now and has been using it stock with a 11.1v LiPo without any problems what-so-ever so maybe they are better than they seem. But I would not bet on it.

 

The piston head is ported and is actually quite nice but unfortunately the nozzle does not seal all that well at all. You could probably see a decent jump in FPS with a new air seal nozzle. I have just ordered a few regular SIG ASNs to test out so hopefully they will work with this.

 

 

 

I will update my findings later :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Alrighty then, for those of you that still care, I have a quick update.

 

I finally was able to get the stock flash hider off of this. And it was not easy. After many, many attempts of heating and forcing and everything else in between I decided to bust out the dremel and get to work. An hour and a half later it finally came off. I have no idea what they used but none of the usual things worked to get the glue to loosen.

 

 

After that, I decided that I didn't like the rifle just plain black with all the FDE stuffs I put on it so I decided to bust out the can of spray paint and blend it in a little bit more.

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Now I just have to beat up the FDE parts because they look too new and shiny compared to the body :lol::lol:

But I will probably just let normal wear and tear from use do that.

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One thing to mention is that the lower receiver by the selector switches is EXTREMELY thin. I received mine broken on the right side of the gun. I actually just removed the selector switch (since the thumb moves it on the left side of the gun) and secured a metal plate over it. Couldn't even notice in the end, but just very frustrating.

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  • 9 months later...

I have just purchased this AEG and am very impressed with it's looks, I have not skirmished yet as it is chronoing at over 390 fps, which seems normal for this weapon when new. I would like to say that I was able to insert a nunchuck 2600mAh 7.4 Lipo into the hand guard without too much trouble. I have since removed the fuse and fitted a deans thus freeing up more space. This has allowed the fitment of a Kong 'plug and play' Mosfet.

 

However as I am not used to this type of AEG, a strip down guide would be very useful, and also how folks have got on with the stock barrel and hop rubber.

 

If I summon up the confidence to strip down and down tune I will post my findings!

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Well took the 556 along to it's first skirmish. As the weather was appalling turnout was poor, however, I was anxious to see how the somewhat exposed battery compartment held up in the heavy rain. The fps put out by this AEG was too hot to operate on full auto so I programmed the mosfet to fire on single only.

 

Apart from the mosfet and removal of the fuse and fitting of the deans connecter the Sig was completely stock, I used .25 bb's and these were flung out at 350ish fps. I was able to zero my red dot sight, which is unusual for AEG's as they are so innacurate. However right out to 50 meters all bb's coincided with the dot, only when I pushed the range to 70 meters did the accuracy drop off. I must say that the bb's were still flying flat but the grouping had opened out.

 

Despite torrential rain all day no problem was noted with water ingress through the cooling holes in the front hand guard. On the range I was able to use full auto against non human targets! The ROF is not fantastic but adaquate particularily with a mosfet set on a 4 round burst, as the weapon wears in I suspect this will improve. However I intend to fit a M100 and check the AOE when I have time.

 

I do not intend adding any cosmetic goodies as I feel any changes would increase the weight and balance, however a PEQ box would be convenient for battery changes etc. However I did have a number of admiring glances and had to field many questions. I originally purchased this AEG to replace a Magpul Masada which I had been using for some months and was never fully satisfied with, Well the Sig will be my new main AEG and I am more than happy with this investment.

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Glad you like it! I have not seen a strip guide for this and unfortunately at this time (or any time in the foreseeable future) I will not be able to make one. I was able to do it without a guide, so if you just go slow and take it easy, you should be able to find your way.

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