Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns The best 1911 mag period.....

OK who makes the best and most reliable 1911 magazine. Colt, Kimber, Wilson, Mc Cormick : etc..........







What has been your personal preference.

Tripp
Metalform
Wilson Combat

Colt doesn't "make" 1911 mags. But I find 7-round mags made to their spec to work just fine.

If I were to pick one maker for all cartridges it would be Tripp.

Metalform makes the best.

Tripp

Jerry

I only use Chip McCormick Power Mags or Wilson Combat. Every thing else is sub standard junk IMO.

I only buy the Chip McCormick mags. They have never failed m e.

Yup.

Wilson for me...

+1

Realistically, any mag that works will do for banging plates. For duty or carry, you want the best mags you can get.

I was carrying a 1911 long before today's plethora of mags were available. CMC Shooting Stars and Wilsons were some of the first good mags you could buy and they worked fine. I used 7 round Metalforms with the round follower for awhile and had excellent service from them. I sent them on to one of my sons with an early Springfield and he's had some trouble with them. I had that pistol here for a year while he was in Afghanistan and it ran fine. I read elsewhere that some Metalforms had faulty springs in them that required replacement; so I wonder if mine were from that batch.

I think Wilsons are OK but I've not used them much. I had such good service from CMC Powermags and the later, 8 round 'Classics' that I never saw a need to switch. I'll eventually order a Tripp or two just to satisfy my curiosity about them.

I have both those and Metalforms. Never had a problem with Metalforms.

I'm not an authority on 1911's but the ones that came with my Remington work just fine so far.

I do have a Chip McCormick 8 rounder on the way though.
I doubt that I'll be able to tell the difference but I'll let you know if I can.

The best magazines are the ones that will function reliably and drop free, when empty, for quick reloading. I have found that the only way to determine the best for your gun is to try them. I have an Auto Ordnance 1911 that I've had for about 20 years and bought some extra magazines for it this year. The Wilson Combat 47D magazines were highly recommended so I bought a couple. Both were terribly tight. Neither would drop free and one was very difficult to insert. I returned them. I then ordered a Tripp magazine. It worked great and while not as tight as the Wilsons, it also would not drop free. I kept it for a range magazine. Frustrated, I gave my 1911 to a friend of mine who is a 1911 gunsmith who took it to his shop (thinking maybe something was wrong with it). He found no problem with my pistol. He tried various magazines he had around his shop and determined the Kimber KimPro magazines and McCormick magazines both readily dropped free and he said both were quality magazines. So, I purchased a couple of each brand and have had no issues with them. The KimPro and McCormick Power Mags are the magazines that I have in rotation (I don't like to keep magazines continuously loaded for more than a month at a time) for home defense use. Obviously, there can be great variation in dimension among the various brands. I was particularly disappointed with the Wilson magazines. In all, I tried 3 different Wilson magazines in my pistol. All were tight and would not drop free and one was very difficult to insert. There would appear to be a QC issue with them. Even the cheap magazines that came with the pistol fit and worked better than the Wilsons.

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Tripp Cobra Mags, period, period.......................period.

Wilson a fairly distant 2nd

MM

QFT

I've had good luck with Chip McCormick Power Mags over several years now. And Colt factory magazines, in Colt pistols with factory recoil springs.

McCormick Power Mags or Wilson Combat, nothing better

McCormick Power Mags can be tough on alloy frames, a fact McCormick acknowledged by introducing the Power Mag+. I don't differentiate magazines by frame material (all for one, one for all) so no use for Power Mags. Wilson Combat magazines generally disable the design goal of the 1911: controlled feed. No thanks.

Metalform magazines are the standard in conventional magazines, but the improved, dare I say modernized, follower of the Tripp magazine is my nomination for the Best.

As there is with both frames & even more so with trigger stirrups.................that's why there is a tool for shaping them.

Far more likely one of the above than the mags, IMO & IME.

MM

Trigger Stirrup Tool

Agreed, it's a possibility. Though, I did have my pistol looked at by a gunsmith who builds custom 1911s. Since we were able to find quality magazines that work and fit very well, we left it at that. I just didn't expect the KimPro and McCormick mags to drop out as if they were catapulted out of there and the one Wilson that needed to pounded on to get it to fully insert and the others that needed to be dragged out of the pistol. Clearly the Wilson mags had the largest outside dimensions of all the magazines I tried.

The trigger stirrup issue is a fairly common problem with mag ejection.........................

I have a dozen 1911's......................Wilson's fit & eject easily from every one of them but I have had Colt mags that would not eject from the Colt pistol that they came with not eject until they were well sanded & polished.

The Colt's are the only mags that have ever given me a problem.

MM

Wilson 47D.

I've tried several and am not loyal to a brand just because of the name. I go with what works. That said:

Tripp - easily THE most reliable magazine I've used. When I shot in a bowling pin league, I put thousands of rounds per year through about six different Tripp Research mags.

KimPro Tac - strangely enough, these have also been perfect for me. I've been waiting for one to screw up, but it hasn't happened yet.

Wilson - I've had two of them give me trouble. When that happened, I got rid of the six or eight that I had.

But, whatever works in your gun, use that and don't let us interweb know-it-alls tell you any different. It's your money, your gun, and your life.

I'll take 7 round metalforms, they work. At much as it pains me to say, the Kimpro's seem to be very good mags....

Wilsons, not a real fan of week springs...