• Home
• Guns For Sale
• Gun Reviews
• Militaria
• Accessories Reviews
• GunMart TV
• Subscriptions
• Find Your Local...new!
  • Shooting Club
  • Dealer
• Downloads
• Distributors

The official website for Gun Mart Magazine, What Gun? and Shooting Sports Magazine.

Previous Page

Hatsan 60S GS

Pete Wadeson tests the Hatsan 60S (GS) and is taken by surprise to discover this version of the mechanical Turkish delight is not what it first appears to be...

Edgar Brothers have long been associated with the Turkish gun manufacturers Hatsan being sole importers of their shotguns, a host of lower price spring air rifles and their one and only PCP rifle. The springers have never really caught on with serious airgunners but do sell to first time buyers and of course younger guns. The latter often bought for them due to the fact that parents aren’t sure if their offspring (no pun intended) will continue on in the sport. In that respect past Hatsan springers in the main have tended to be seen as cheap ‘n’ cheerful introductory level rifles, but there have always been higher quality ‘adult size’ air rifles available of which the Hatsan 60S was the flagship of the springer range. Now things have taken a major up-turn as Edgar Brothers are not only supplying the usual 60S spring and piston powered model but now also as a rifle with a gas ram power plant – and it’s this new ‘GS’ model that we have on test.

Turkish walnut

The benefits of the gas-ram system are well documented, having been invented by Theoben, refined over the years and still featuring on some of their most popular rifles. The gas struts on the Hatsan 60S are manufactured for Edgar Brothers in the UK and fitted here replacing the original spring and piston power plant.

Before looking at how this changes performance of the standard 60S, let’s look at the practical stock design.

The rifle has a Turkish Walnut stock which helps it rise above most other wood stocked Hatsan springers both cosmetically and due to the upgraded design. Hatsan have obviously upped their game when it comes to quality of manufacture and the 60S shows it.

Though it has the lines of a traditional full length sporter, there’s no cheekpiece, rather it uses a raised comb. Other features include a chunky and lengthy forend which will suit most builds for a leading hand hold, and a ventilated rubber butt pad to finish. A relatively steep drop down ergonomic pistol grip puts the hand in a very comfortable position for precise trigger control. There’s also a generous amount of well cut chequering in two opposing panels at the grip and forend.

Quattro trigger

Having experience of the standard 60S, the cocking stroke of the gas ram model is much smoother but does require a progressive amount of ‘heft’ as you reach the lock back point, whereupon the rifle has engaged with the sears and the automatic safety. On inspection the reason for this is the quirky shaped one-piece non articulated cocking linkage and being so long means a lot of the underside of the forend is cut away. However, the length of the 60’s barrel gives more leverage for cocking and direct barrel loading is made easy due to the well exposed breech when open. Here, when in the open position, you can clearly see the breech sports a heavy duty O-ring to give that all important airtight seal when closed and a large wedge shaped catch to lock the barrel in position. In fact, after thumbing a pellet directly into the breech and swinging the barrel back up it was good to feel and hear a solid reassuring ‘clunk’ that everything is locked and definitely loaded.

The 60S uses what is known as the ‘Quattro Trigger’, the rifle having this etched on the right of the air cylinder. This 2-stage adjustable trigger unit is a big step forward in the manufacture of these ‘higher spec’ Hatsan air rifles and the metal blade is very well curved and proportioned within the metal trigger guard. The automatic trigger safety protrudes rearward from the cylinder when the rifle is cocked. Return the barrel to the closed position and push the auto safety in and the rifle is in ‘live fire’ mode, this being visually indicated with a red dot shown on both sides of the safety catch ‘slide.’ It can be reset at any point just by pulling back to the rearward position.

The level of trigger adjustment is quite impressive as you can adjust length of travel through first and second stage of pull and when the trigger trips the sear it does so cleanly and crisply.

Fibre optic sights

The 60S can be shot straight from the box due to the in vogue ‘Tru-Glo’ fibre optic open sights. These are seen as a hooded raised red fibre optic foresight bar while the fully adjustable rearsight notch is flanked by green fibre optic rods. Elevation is adjusted by a large serrated edge and numbered thumbwheel while windage is adjusted by a much smaller almost spigot like ridged finger screw. The rifle also has a lengthy run of dovetails milled on top of the air cylinder for mounting a scope. At the rear there’s a removable scope mount arrester strap.

Before scoping up I did play with the open sights and they proved effective for closer range work with ragged ¾” groups at 12-15yds quickly becoming the norm for this .22 rifle.

For the main accuracy test I kept it in the family and scoped up with an Opti-Mate 3 – 9 X 50AO scope from Edgar Bros. set in high mounts. I found this complimented the rifle very nicely indeed and added extra weight for a more solid feel.

Once scoped up, with a set zero of 25-yds, the 60S had no trouble creating the same ¾” groups with reassuring frequency and after becoming accustomed to the rifle it’s certainly capable in the right hands of making clean kills out to 35-yds.

To sum up: the overall build of the Hatsan 60S is of a much higher quality than I’m sure many airgunners would expect. Even the finish of the metalwork is of a surprising quality.
Also, when you can shoot straight from the box you’ve got an edge on sales from a certain amount of the airgun shooting fraternity, so immediately the 60S will pick up admirers in that department. So here’s the rub. We now have a gas ram powered air rifle that Theoben incidentally don’t have any input in modifying, but now Edgar Brothers have had a hand in creating the first production gas ram air rifle with open sights. That in itself, as well as the price will appeal to many shooters. 

Handling

Though a full length sporter the 60S does feel lighter than it actually is but handles and balances very nicely, shooting with or without an optic. Compared to the spring powered version, the firing cycle is obviously different and you feel it on discharge. Recoil was quite low and the ‘SaS’ (shock absorbing system) of the very comfortable ventilated light brown ‘soft’ rubber butt pad soaked it up at the shoulder and I was again pleasantly surprised at the low muzzle report even though it isn’t silenced.

In my opinion Hatsan in conjunction with Edgar Bros. have created a rather special air rifle here, and it’s one that’s very accurate, handles well and could quite possibly be what a certain sector of the airgun shooting fraternity have been waiting for…

Technical Specifications
Model	Hatsan 60S GS (Edgar-60S-TG-GR)
Type	Break-barrel sporter
Action	Gas ram
Calibre	.22 calibre only
Overall Length	45”
Barrel Length	17.7”
Weight	7.5lb
Sights	Fully adjustable fibre optic opens
Trigger	2-Stage adjustable ‘Quattro’
Safety	Automatic, resettable
Stock	Turkish Walnut Sporter
Power	11+ft lbs
Price	£229
Scope	Price Opti-Mate 3 – 9 X 50AO £75

All Prices Are Guides Due to the Changes in US & European Exchange Rates

• Buy a Gun
• Sell a Gun