If you want the best can for the job, you need to consider a suppressor’s materials alongside its baffle design, construction and features.
Suppressors have been slowly and steadily entering the mainstream discussion in hunting, range use and general recreation during the past 15 years or so. The technology from the “golden” days of gun sales during the Obama administration is quite different than what we can now access. Just as thermal optics once costing $20,000 can now be accessed for a fraction of that, suppressors have come a long way in terms of cost, performance and durability.
As something of a suppressor aficionado, I have a good amount of them and determine what they’re going to get used for based on several criteria, as not all cans are created (or printed) equal.
Canned Hunt
Getting into suppressors used to be something of a goose chase: I dove in and had to chase down results. My first suppressor took me almost 2 years to get, the process being clunky and the government websites a bit ’90s in layout and user-friendliness. The timeframe alone was enough to deter many people from wanting to get into the business of suppressors, not to mention the frustrating $200 tax we must pay on each for the ability to exercise our rights.
The bad news, as of this writing, is that the tax is still there; we might see it change, as things are trending in a good direction, but who knows when, if ever, that will be. The good news is that there’s a much more streamlined process to get your suppressors, and it’s even faster now than it’s ever been (my last two cleared in a week). If you go through places like Silencer Shop or Silencer Central, they can help you get everything done in a simple way where you don’t have to hunt around for answers.
As the market has grown, we’ve seen a lot of specialty technology emerging, where in the past most cans were somewhat simple and straightforward in materials and construction. This wasn’t because people weren’t interested in making better ones; it was rather that the process to acquire a suppressor was much more convoluted, and many states hadn’t established their legality for ownership and hunting use.
Simply put, suppressors were just not in demand due to the social and political atmosphere of the times.
But all that has changed. The product variety today is huge, and it’s no longer as simple as buying a suppressor and hoping for the best from a limited pool. You can get a suppressor for just about any end-use today, from .22 LR to 12-gauge, to .50 BMG. We’re at a point where specialization is, in fact, the name of the game, and the more unique the better, at least from the consumer perspective.
Today, a company producing suppressors is competing in a fairly crowded market. Where only a decade ago many of these companies did exist, they were producing products for the aforementioned limited audience, and, as a result, they weren’t really in a mode of innovation. To be competitive today, a can company needs to have either a very specific type of consumer they wish to market to and produce a specialized product, or really hit it hard and make something for everyone to the point where the brand becomes a mainstay for that individual buyer. For instance, SilencerCo suppressors (many of which you see in this article) share a good number of common parts and tools, making it much more feasible for the end-user to maintain and move their cans from gun to gun.
In the case of the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M, it can be converted to work on just about any centerfire firearm that can fire a bullet through its baffles, up to .460 Weatherby Mag. I’ve used this suppressor on .450 Bushmaster, .308, .30-06, 9mm, 10mm, .45 ACP, 6.5 Creedmoor, 5.56 NATO and many, many more. It’s arguably the most versatile suppressor on the current market by ability to convert alone. There are some drawbacks, such as weight, that we’ll get to below.
So, suffice to say, today’s market has you covered.
Modular Melodrama
In general, there’s a physical limit to the amount of things you can ask of a suppressor—given its materials. The same goes for guns, ammunition, optics and just about anything we use to shoot. If you want more performance, it comes at some kind of price. That performance metric is individual and personal in most cases; some want a very specific thing, others a general-purpose item.
When I’m not at the range, I fish. In fact, I probably spend more time in life with a fishing rod in my hand than I do a gun on my hip. I started out with the rod that could catch me the most fish for the buck. It wasn’t until I began to get really serious about my fishing that I started to look at specialized rods for individual tasks. Luckily, I’m married to the daughter of a prolific sportsman, so my ever-growing arsenal of rods and reels is considered the mark of a man and not a person with a spending problem.
While you can, of course, draw a comparison with just about everything in life to fishing, from eternal life to basic meditation, the same concept here exists with suppressors. If you want the purity of fly fishing for smallmouth in a creek, you’ll need something specific. Likewise, if you’re hunting squirrels often and walking a lot, you’ll want something set to that task.
Construction dictates features, and features dictate utility.
The more specialized a suppressor is, the less parts it’ll have as a rule of thumb, and it’ll often be much lighter. The more modular a suppressor, the more parts and the heavier it will be. These are generalities, but there are exceptions. Like rods and reels, you can do a lot with a base setup, but ultimately you’re going to want to meet your actual requirements for use.
The Dedicated Few
Looking at three “dedicated” suppressors here, we have various degrees of specialization in materials, acceptable pressures and end uses.
First in the specialized class is the Q LLC Jumbo Shrimp (yes, that’s the actual name), and it’s a dedicated 6.5mm hunting suppressor. It’s one single piece with no removable parts. As far as suppressors go, it’s very light at 9 ounces, being all titanium, but short and not necessarily very quiet. It’s made as a hunting suppressor for lightweight rifles, and it’s what I would call “hearing safe,” in that it drops a 16-inch 6.5 Creedmoor down to a tolerable noise level … but not as quiet as it could be.
In this case—making a rifle comfortable and portable is the goal—it does require a Q-style muzzle adapter to use it, so by mere ounces it can be considered a bit more complicated than a direct-thread model. You can use this on other rifles smaller than 6.5mm, such as 5.56 and 6 ARC. The rifle in this feature photography is a Primary Weapon Systems (PWS) 6 ARC build, and the Jumbo Shrimp is very much at home on it.
The SilencerCo Scythe Ti is another field-style suppressor that can handle centerfire calibers from 5.56 NATO to .300 Remington Ultra Mag in any barrel length. Lighter than the Jumbo Shrimp by 2 ounces and also made of titanium, this suppressor lands in the short-but-effective category. What’s notable is that it’s somewhat modular and can be moderately adapted using some other SilencerCo parts, but it’s otherwise meant to be a direct-thread proposition.
The general concept of these types of cans is that you’re going to be shooting, but not a ton. In my time with this individual suppressor, I found that it was by far one of the nicest for balance when mounted on a rifle, but not necessarily as quiet as others, and it heats up very quickly, producing a lot of mirage in the optics after a handful of rounds. You will find this on many lightweight setups, not just here. I love this suppressor, and it’s easily one of my favorites. However, if I were shooting a lot—to the point of getting this can smoking—I’d not be using it for the right reasons. This is a precision suppressor ideal for hunting.
Last on my list of specialized suppressors is one that I’ve quite a few rounds through, and it has gulped up a lot of KY Jelly. Yes, you read that right. The Bowers ASP 45 is a dedicated .45 ACP pistol suppressor that has very limited use on some rifles and other handguns. It has one removable part, the Atlas thread adapter, but this part is essentially meant to be mounted on the pistol somewhat permanently. You can consider this a one-piece can like you would the Jumbo Shrimp, considering the can also needs an adapter on its host rifle.
The ASP is a wet suppressor, meaning you need to put an ablative medium in it for best results. Ablatives can be as simple as water, but the better options have a bit more stick to them, such as wire pulling gel, ultrasound jelly and Astroglide or KY Jellies. While your friends may joke about seeing that in your range bag, they won’t be laughing for long.
Since we’re adults here, the adult-oriented gels have a very good viscosity that keeps these suppressors quiet for more rounds than water or thinner gels. Using 230-grain FMJ at the standard 850-fps velocity, a 5-inch 1911 is only about as loud as a paintball gun. This suppressor is extremely quiet, considering how much lead is being launched. The caveat is that this super-light, 5-ounce suppressor, made of only aluminum, is filthy and sprays carbon-laden lube everywhere, including inside the gun and all over slide-mounted optics. I need to clean that pistol after every use. Without ablative, it also heats up very fast, making handling difficult. If you want the most suppression with a full-power handgun, this is a very specialized choice.
Changing It Up
Modular suppressors take on various forms, but they offer the end user the greatest general-use abilities. As mentioned above, the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M is arguably the king of modular cans. It can consume more centerfire calibers than just about anything on the market and is extremely rugged, but it’s somewhat heavy at about 15 ounces—and that’s not great for balance on light rifles. But it works, plain and simple.
The weight consideration is notable; it weighs as much as the Jumbo Shrimp and Scythe Ti combined. Its construction is rugged and involves stainless-steel, titanium and inconel. It’s full-auto rated and bleeds heat in a much more controlled way than the rapid mirage of titanium-only cans. The Omega 36M is also featured here and, in fact, shares several modular parts with the 46M, but it has a 9mm-class bore. It’s also one of my favorites for large-frame semi-auto rifles in the .30-caliber class.
Next up is the JK Armament 155 series. I have bores from .22 to .45, and these are very unique in their properties. I have one in titanium, but being that it’s a modular can—each baffle is a single piece—it’s not as light as the welded titanium versions. The other ones I use are constructed of aluminum and are very light and adaptable to various direct-thread and manufacturer-specific mounts. I use Rearden adapters for Q-style mounts on most of my rifles: I’ve found this to be one of the most accurate and repeatable mounts out there.
The nice thing about the modular JK cans is that you can use lead bullets—lever gun owners pay attention. Sealed cans should only be used with jacketed bullets, but baffle-based cans like the JK series can be broken down and scrubbed of lead and bullet lube easily. If you like to take hardcast or your own homebrew bullets into the field, this is what you want. These are accurate suppressors for precision work, and I’ve really come to like them for their flexibility.
A special build for medium-range hunting, featuring a Detroit Gun Works barreled action, Foundation stock, Vortex optic and JK suppressor. Accessories by Scope Chaps, Armageddon Gear, SAP and Wiebad cheek pads. Tripod by Two Vets.
Unique Properties
Additionally, 3D printing is becoming a fixture of the suppressor market. PWS is a market leader in 3D printing technology, producing a variety of modular suppressors from titanium. Not only are they made with this advanced technology, but they’re also able to be disassembled into baffles and accept many standard-mount adapters. This means of manufacture is becoming more common, and the nature of this technology is coming to more shops interested in producing unconventional products.
Shapes that would be almost impossible to machine, or at least prohibitive in cost, can be easily accomplished in the 3D space, allowing for unconventional designs to become reality. This has a huge impact on the thinking we can achieve in terms of internal space inside suppressors, not to mention unexplored means of heat dispersion and gas flow.
We’re only at the beginning of this chapter of suppressor design, a far cry from where we were when suppressors were gaining commercial traction in the early 2010s. And, we’re only just now starting in terms of what can be done with sound suppression. Although things happen slowly in this industry, the next 5 to 10 years will likely look just as foreign to us as the prior 10 years does now.
And it will all be good stuff. I’m excited to see what happens.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the 2025 suppressor special issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.
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