Made of 3D-printed, Purposely Induced Porosity titanium, Zastava’s ZVUK suppressor is a seriously lightweight way to hush up your AK.
One of the great things about suppressors exploding in popularity is that it’s made room in the market for more niche, specialized designs. Why have one ultra-versatile suppressor that you swap between several guns when it’s never been cheaper, easier, or faster to have multiple dedicated cans for individual firearms? That’s how I’m treating Zastava’s ZVUK suppressor, anyway, as the can that will stay married to my WASR-10.
Of course, at its core the ZVUK is just a HUB-compatible .30-caliber suppressor, so you could use it on just about anything. But let’s be real, its appearance was modeled after the Soviet PBS-1 silencer; this can was made for AKs.
Zastava ZVUK SPECS
Caliber: .30
Material: PIP Titanium
Construction: 3D-Printed
Weight: 13.4 Ounces (With Mount)
Overall Length: 8.3 Inches
Diameter: 1.93 Inches (Major) / 1.6 Inches (Minor)
Coating: High-Temp Cerakote
HUB Compatible?: Yes
Included Mount: 14×1 LH Direct Thread
MSRP: $1,300
Pros:
- Super lightweight
- Quiet with a nice tone
- Reduced backpressure
Cons:
- Expensive
- No wrench flats on suppressor body
- Monolithic construction is harder to clean
The Zastava ZVUK
Zastava is a storied arms manufacturer primarily known for its AKs. The company’s guns are made in Serbia, but their ZVUK suppressors are obviously made in the U.S. for legal reasons. The ZVUK is the company’s first foray into making suppressors, at least for the American civilian market, and it has a lot going for it.
Impressively, Zastava decided to go big with its first suppressor. Instead of starting with some simple stainless steel, traditional design, the company dove headfirst into the modern manufacturing methods that we see in the industry today. Namely, 3D-printed titanium and PIP technology.
If you’re not familiar, PIP stands for Purposely Induced Porosity. In other words, the metal inside the suppressor is filled with microscopic air pockets that help with gas management, sound suppression, and heat dissipation. If you look at the top of a ZVUK, you can see the almost foam-like texture in the titanium that’s a result of this manufacturing process. Because there’s less metal in the can versus a traditional design, it helps save weight as well, though its monolithic 3D-printed construction keeps it strong despite having less total material.
One downside of PIP cans, however, is all those tiny holes also trap more carbon and debris, and that results in more rapid fouling. Also, because the ZVUK is monolithic, it can only be properly cleaned through soaking, ideally with an ultrasonic cleaner. Zastava recommends cleaning the ZVUK once every 1,500-2,500 rounds, but that’s not too rigorous for most folks’ shooting schedules.
Even with that in mind, the benefits of PIP cans far outweigh their drawbacks, and the ZVUK is evidence of that. It’s very quiet, has reduced backpressure, and is very lightweight for its size.
It’s impossible to accurately measure sound suppression without a laboratory filled with fancy equipment, but thankfully, PEW Science has just that and already did testing on the ZVUK for all of us. I’ll let you read their full report here if you’re curious, but the short version is that it performed much better in sound mitigation and backpressure reduction at both the muzzle and the shooter’s ear than its closest competitor on the market: the Dead Air Wolverine. I didn’t have a Wolverine to test against my ZVUK side-by-side, but I can tell you that Zastava’s AK suppressor was very pleasant to shoot in terms of noise and didn’t send too much gas back in the face.
I did most of my testing using a bog-standard WASR-10, so no adjustable pistons or other internal gadgetry affected the shooting experience.
On The Range
In my time with the ZVUK, I put nearly 1,000 rounds through it. Most of that was basic Wolf 124gr FMJ, but I fed it some Detroit Ammo Co. 220gr subsonics as well. With the subsonics, most of what you heard while shooting was the AK’s big bolt cycling like a typewriter. Even without ears on, it was downright enjoyable. Not just due to the sound level, but because of its tone.
I found the ZVUK’s handling to be very impressive as well. It’s a longer can at 8.3 inches, and that adds a good bit of length to the muzzle of a standard AK, but that’s necessary for its suppression performance. Despite that length, however, its light weight of 13.4 ounces (with mount installed) hardly affected the rifle’s balance.
AKs are heavy guns, especially with a fully loaded steel magazine of 7.62×39. Yet, most suppressors still tend to make them front-heavy. With the all-titanium ZVUK? Not the case. You hardly notice that it’s there when shouldering the rifle, even when transitioning between targets. If mounted to a short-barrel AK, it would only make for an even handier and more maneuverable package.
AKs are also notoriously overgassed by design, something that can make shooting them an eye-watering, cough-inducing affair with traditional suppressors. But as I mentioned before, the ZVUK’s use of PIP technology helps to mitigate that. It doesn’t completely keep gas out of your face, but it does keep it from being obnoxious. I suspect that an AK with a couple of extra bells and whistles, like a KNS Precision adjustable gas piston and a dust cover gasket, would reduce gas in the face to near-zero when shooting with a ZVUK.
The titanium construction of Zastava’s suppressor has many benefits, but as is true with all Ti cans, it has some downsides as well. Namely, it heats up faster than steel and is therefore not as suited for high-volume-of-fire shooting. During my testing, though, I didn’t hesitate to put three 30-round magazines through it at a pretty brisk (but not magdumping) pace. Doing so resulted in some smoke billowing off the suppressor, but nothing crazy, and I’m sure it could handle more before the metal would start to degrade. This isn’t a big deal for most shooters looking for an AK can, but if you specifically want one for an FRT host or something similar, one made of Inconel or steel would be a better option.
Mounting Woes
This brings us to the single issue I had with my ZVUK, but the good news is that I think it was just a QC issue with the direct-thread HUB mount that shipped with mine. So, not a universal design flaw, and not a problem with the suppressor itself.
In short, no matter what I did, my ZVUK kept working itself loose from the HUB mount after a magazine or two. I cleaned and degreased the threads. I used plenty of torque. I added Teflon tape. I even tried applying Rocksett. Amazingly, none of these solutions made a difference, and the problem persisted.
It also didn’t help that the suppressor body doesn’t have any wrench flats or other surfaces designed for a tool to properly torque it to the HUB, a feature I prefer all cans to have. At home, while it’s cool, it’s easy enough to put the ZVUK in a vise and crank the mount on with the included wrench. But when it’s hot at the range and you need to grab the suppressor to resecure it to the HUB, not as much.
I eventually solved the issue by replacing the Zastava-made HUB mount with a nearly identical direct-thread 14×1 LH HUB from Atlantic Firearms. As soon as I did that, it never worked loose again, even after a few hundred more rounds through it.
I haven’t found anyone online who experienced the same issue, so I’ll chalk it up to my individual mount being a lemon. At least it was the mount and not the can. While unfortunate, it was an easy and inexpensive fix to replace the original HUB.
That said, when a can costs north of $1,200, you hope to not have any problems with it, and that’s another aspect of the ZVUK that isn’t ideal: its price. Titanium is very expensive, and the ZVUK is a pricey can because of that. But it’s also why it’s so damn light. Whether the weight savings are worth the extra cost will be up to you.
Parting Shot
All in all, I was very impressed with the ZVUK, but it’s also probably not the hands-down best option for every single AK shooter out there. It depends on what you’re looking for in a suppressor.
With the ZVUK, you get a super lightweight can that offers good sound suppression with a nice tone, reduced backpressure, and killer, classic Combloc looks. All that just comes with a pretty hefty price tag.
There are other .30-caliber cans out there, both AK-specific and generic, that offer better suppression and greater backpressure reduction for less money. However, they’ll almost certainly be heavier, too. And besides the Dead Air Wolverine, which the ZVUK outclasses, it won’t look like a Soviet PBS.
But if you’re after a nice-sounding AK can that won’t throw off the balance of your carbine, the ZVUK will absolutely get the job done, and it will look great while doing it.
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