Damaged rifling in SPA barrel (Mrodair Plinkster)

Guys, I wanted to give you a heads up that I received a .177 Mrodair Plinkster (SPA CR600W) on Friday that has damaged rifling at the muzzle.  This is my 3rd SPA gun and neither of the two previous ones had this problem so hopefully it is an isolated thing, but if you are struggling to get decent groups, you may want to grab a flashlight and look to see if yours is affected.  You'll need to remove whatever muzzle attachment is present and then shine light into the end of the barrel.  Look down into the bore by at least 1/2"…the sheen and texture of the lands should appear uniform all the way down.  If a pilot has damaged the lands near the muzzle, they will have a shiny burnished appearance that suddenly becomes more matte as you look a bit deeper.
 
I will try to get a useful picture later this evening.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to see about getting mine replaced or chop off the offending area and recrown.
 
Here are some models and their aliases that use the same type of barrel.
CR600W, Mrodair Plinkster
PR900W, Mrodair Varmint, Diana Stormrider
CP1-M, Mrodair Target Master
CP2, Mrodair Master Blaster
 
If you check yours, please report back whether it is positive or negative.

[edit] Here's a photo of the damage.  Also note that when I pushed some pellets through, there was an obvious degree of drag as they went through the damaged section that could easily be mistaken for a choke.

Hope u can get it like u want...Ive had a 177 plinkster for a couple of weeks ...rifling is ok and its on the money out to 25 yard...which is far as I can safely shoot...with the mags its one of my favorite shooters...good luck

Added photo and comments to the original post...

I reached out today to Mike at Mrodair with an email w/photo and a followup call which resulted in a voice mail.

I will report back on the outcome.

There is one on the MrodAir website.

About halfway down on the right side of the page is a link:

AIRMAX AIRGUN
EXPLODED VIEWS

Jason... That's good to hear. I think yours is the only case I've heard of with the barrel issue so changes are good of you getting a good one.
Do keep us posted.

Just a quick update.  This thing has been mothballed for a few months.  Mike had agreed to exchange the barrel but after I thought about it, it would take me about as much time to fool with returning it as it would to fix it so I chopped off about 1/2" and recrowned it:



In the interest of keeping the rifle lightweight so the kids can handle it, it's wearing a cheap non-AO 3-9x scope.  Now it will do ragged hole groups at 25 yards with JSB 8.4gr.



Originally the velocity was around 675fps but it only gave about 25 shots so I had to do something about that.  A simple O-ring buffer against the valve has it giving 58 shots at ~600fps.  Total energy on a 12gr cartridge isn't much better than my CP1-M pistol so I'm not that excited about it, but I decided I was going to stop fiddling with it once the shot count was up over 50 so that's where it will stay.

After replacing the trigger spring with a cutoff from a flint spring taken from a disposable lighter, and adding a bushing to remedy the absurdly long trigger take up (made from the body of a 5/32 aluminum rivet), it's a joy to shoot!