Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Drop-in triggers for ARs.

I've never used a RRA Match trigger - are you saying they have "creep, grittiness & mushiness"? The CMC and some other lower cost (vs Geissele) triggers I've tried seemed pretty good but I've never tried a Geissele so I don't have a comparison point there, either.

While I hate crappy triggers (and love good ones), there seems to me to be point of diminishing returns. Caveat - I don't shoot competitively except against my previous efforts, and the chances of me seeing combat at 67 years old are pretty slim.

Larue MBT when its on sale for 99 bucks, I like it just as well as my more expensive ssa-e.

I think he misspoke there. Talking about stock triggers.


There are diminishing returns. The big jump in cost is from adding adjustability. Other than that, there isn't a whole lot of difference. Rolled steel instead of cast. The Geissele gives you a little faster locktime, but you probably won't notice that unless you compete at above a 95% level in HP Standing.

Good call...

First off, RRNM triggers are $120 list and on sale for around $89 and the Geissele G2S lists for $179 and goes on sale for $120. The $30 difference is worth it to me. The $279 triggers may be the berries but I'm not to that level.

You can't compare a bolt trigger with an AR trigger. The design of the standard AR trigger has some built in safety designs that won't allow it to be tuned good enough to compete with a good trigger and remain safe. I've seen too many "tuned" standard triggers have problems if they're shot enough. I have had a few decent standard triggers (after firing about 500 times) that were good enough to use on my Colt 6720 and a 6920 with irons and red dots or so I thought until I broke down and installed G2S's in both of them and I started shooting better. On a bench any trigger can be made to work but I shoot these 2 guns off hand and the 2 stage G2S's made a big difference. Maybe it's just me.

I don't waste ammo but I do shoot quite a bit and every shot I try to learn from.

I like things that work and if I'm hunting a coyote or shooting a match, there is no room for sub par parts. It has nothing to do with combat.

Amen!

Putting a quality trigger in just takes one more variable out of the equation. You can learn more and become more proficient with fewer variables to work around.

Ed

Best trigger in the world wont fix a bad barrel or a host of other problems.

Nope. Won't cure crappy shooting techniques, either.
Just one more variable eliminated.

Ed

Have you tried a Geissele SSA-E? IMHO it's way better than a RRNM. It's just nearly as good as a good bolt action trigger in the second stage and the 2 stage design makes it as safe as a stock trigger. On the second stage it only takes 2 lbs more to break. Just as you think you might be able to detect the smallest amount of creep it breaks,leaving you wondering if you really felt any creep at all. It's very easy to stage to the wall for targets,or just pull through in rapid fire.

The main thing is that the 2 stage design is safe and dependable. You aren't operation on minimum sear contact,like a single stage where a drop or hard hit could set it off. It's also an open design that isn't prone to being clogged up with debris like the closed box designs. IMHO it's the very best in a combat precision trigger. You aren't giving up anything over the GI design and you are gaining quite a bit in precision.

And a bad trigger won't help the best barrel out there... I can't tell if you actually like AR's or are trying to join the bolt only club.

I haven't tried the SSA-E mainly because I'm content with my G2S's, all 5 of them. I have in the past used Jewel, RRNM, Bushmaster, Millazzo, CMC and a few others out there but I like the G2S. It's got a clean break, fast lock time, won't break the bank and is as reliable as anything else out there without anything to come loose, break or wear. I can't say that for the RR, BM or Jewel for that matter.

I'm kind of indifferent to ARs even though I own three (.223/5.56, .300BLK and .308W). Much prefer bolts for most of my needs as I hate chasing brass and don't care for having a brass catcher attached to my rifle.

But that doesn't have much to do with my questions about AR triggers I've already swapped one out for a Ruger Elite 452. Would a Giessele really do anything for me? I'm not convinced.

Probably not. Every report I've seen on the Ruger is that it is a decent 2-stage trigger.

I've got four Geissele triggers; two G2S triggers, an SSA-E, and a Hi-Speed National Match.

The G2S are a great trigger and a bargain when they are on sale; I picked one up for $116 a couple of years ago. This trigger has the same pull weights as the SSA: 2-1/2 lb. first stage and 2 lb, second stage.
Brownells also sells a G2S-E enhanced version that has the same pull weights as the SSA-E: 2.3 lbs. first stage and 1.2 lbs. second stage. For the price this is probably the best bang for the Geissele buck.

I did not find much perceptible difference between the G2S and the SSA-E triggers, in fact when we measured pull weight on one of my buddies new SSA-E triggers and compared it to a broken in G2S I had, the G2S broke lighter.

The Hi-Speed National Match definitely provided a very noticeable improvement when shooting from the bench or prone, but I don't think it would be worth the extra cost if your shooting is mainly off-hand. It is an adjustable design that will go down to a .6 lb. pull on the second stage and it's a bit more complicated to install and adjust.

One thing about the open style (parts) triggers as compared to the cassette style "drop-in" triggers is you have easy access to the springs should you decide the trigger needs a bit of tuning.

The SSA-E trigger I linked to earlier is no longer on sale at Brownells but the G2S-E is now on sale with free shipping.

G2S-E trigger

Probably be a good idea to go to Geiselle's website & review the differences between the G2S, SSA & SSA-E triggers.

Or maybe read the post above which lists some of the differences correctly.

MM

And that's why I stated earlier that triggers are subjective..............what one person feels & wants & needs is not necessarily what another feels & wants & needs. Everyone is not created equal.

But rest assured, that for any kind of precision shooting, a clean & relatively light trigger will improve your scores or POA hits, with clean being more important than weight, within a reasonable range, but 7lb vs 2 lb is not a reasonable range to me, whereas the difference between 2 & 3 is.

MM

All I'll say is if you are pulling through the 2nd stage in a rapid fire string, you are not doing it correctly and in my prime I"d have beaten you every time.

Thats the joy of the 2 stage, you don't have to ignore the 2nd break, you expect it, get used to it, and ENJOY it for what its doing for you.

Lots of bolt gun shooters in across the course shot 2 stage also... and in long range. I'm not sure what the crowd goes with now as we only shot service rifle and I'm even lost in that crowd these days.

I pull to the 2nd stage, refine my aim and finish. It's all in one motion sort of but it gives me a safe light trigger. I find myself doing the exact thing with my Apex'd M&P9 pistol, it just works.

I think some target shooters have a different definition of "rapid fire" than the rest of us. I'm guessing MM was talking about pulling the trigger as fast as possible, not 1 round in 10 seconds or whatever the long range target shooters think is rapid fire.

MM -

I fully agree that a "clean & relatively light trigger" (what I would call a "decent" trigger) beats the heck out of a crappy one when it comes to precision shooting. That's why I've replaced a couple and reworked many (my Timney came pre-installed on a naked Interarms Mark X action that became my 6.5-06AI).

Tried to clean up a crappy, standard AR trigger (against the advice of rost495 and others) and ended up with a smooth trigger that fired twice - once on the backstroke and once on the reset. Now I see commercial triggers that do that, so maybe I was just ahead of the times. That AR got the Ruger trigger, which cut the group size considerably.

That's a good read. I found the comparison of the "casset" type drop-ins with a Geissele pretty interesting.



"For an even easier-to-visualize comparison, that’s the Geissele in bold sharing the same chart as the ELF, at the same scale as the graphs in this article. It travels more than twice as far and is a total creep monster in comparison. Heck, the $129 RISE black trigger is crisper and shorter than this $260 Geissele. Again though, nobody in their right mind would say that the SD-3G isn’t an excellent trigger."