I don't recall any talk about changing alloys, but I do recall that Barnes changed copper suppliers to get more consistent product, in an effort to increase expansion reliability.
Jordan, that's exactly what Randy Brooks told me.
I mentioned that I'd found the standard, ungrooved shank X-Bullet had consistently started shooting well during the last few years of its existence. Randy said that as the bullet became more successful, they could afford to buy more consistent copper--which I understood to mean the older bullets were made of copper that wasn't nearly as pure, containing traces of other metals. As a result, the later X-Bullets were more consistent in both diameter and expansion. I had great results with them in several calibers--except for fouling. They still fouled barrels quite a bit, though more in some barrels than others.
That was probably during the half-dozen years before the TSX was introduced in 2004.
