Are you talking about the rotor style nozzles that spray a multi stream? That's what it seems like, you have regular spray heads and the rotary nozzles.

The filters that come with them are not to reduce the pressure, they are to keep debris out of the nozzle because even a little bit will cause the nozzles to get stuck. If you were running them without those filters that might explain why you were having problems. You might want to have someone flush out your system too and then put in new nozzles.

To replace it with the single stream style gear driven rotors I think requires you to dig out the hole head, flush the system and then insert the heads. It's possible but a PITA, I think you're better off just using the nozzles the system was spec'd with and just make sure to flush and use the filters. If you have the water flow to handle it, you might want to consider the normal spray heads. Either way, you should check with the installer or someone that is capable of analyzing your system and putting in the appropriate heads for your water pressure and flow.

I think you're describing impact sprinklers as the ones you have now and asking if you can replace them with gear driven sprinklers.

The impact sprinklers are the ones that have the little thing that hits the water every so often until it gets to the end of its circle, then it changes direction and goes back with the little thing hitting the water really fast on the way back (tch . . tch . . tch . . tch . . tchtchtchtchtch). Gear driven sprinklers send water out in a similar spray pattern but are nearly silent.

Gear driven sprinklers are much better than the impact sprinklers, in my opinion. They're nearly silent, they break less often, they distribute the water more evenly.

If your water pressure drops, the impact sprinklers will often get to the end, but not have enough force to trip the switch to start back in the other direction, so you get a really dark green stripe surrounded by a circle of dead grass. That never happens with the gear driven sprinklers.

I started replacing my impact heads with gear driven heads last year and will never buy another impact sprinkler head.

Yes thats what I was talking about, I hate the impact, they never go back all the way around, well I shouldn't say never, but only a couple times a day can i run my system because of that problem. MY question was can I just take the impact sprinklers off (unscrew at the bottom) and put the gear driven ones on (screw on at the bottom)? Looks like the same size. If so, I'm doing that tomorrow lol.

Yes you can change them out if the new ones have the same approximate throw.

"MY question was can I just take the impact sprinklers off (unscrew at the bottom) and put the gear driven ones on (screw on at the bottom)?"

Maybe. A lot goes into a sprinkler design and you can't just randomly replace components without any thought. First you need to determine exactly what model sprinklers you have and then look for sprinklers that can accommodate the same diameter and have the same or lower GPM and PSI requirements.

Impact sprinklers can get stuck because of either too high or too low pressure. It seems you tried to reduce the pressure and that didn't help so your problem might be too low pressure. In that case you might have problems with gear drives as well.

The first thing you need to do is determine what your problem is before you put any more effort and money into fixing it.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough, but yes, you can replace impact heads with gear driven heads. I've replaced most of mine that way.