Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns 1911 poll addendum - magazines

Got my "best buy" Tisas 1911 9mm but one of the two mags that came with it is having some issues, so looking for two or three good aftermarket magazines.

It seems that Wilson Combat is the gold standard of 1911 magazines, but who else is a decent buy? A quick search on various online sites shows Ed Brown, MecGar, Metalform, Kimber, Springfield Armory and a few others starting at about $20 up to the mid-upper $30 price range.

Any brand to particularly avoid?

I've got some Metalforms I'm not exactly happy with, they often fail to lock a slide open. I've had good luck with the Springfield magazines that come with the pistols they sell, and yes, the 10rd. Wilsons are pretty good.

Honestly, I've been having some excellent luck with Metalform .38 Super magazines with the rounded followers (not the flat followers, though), if you can find some of those, they'll work well. Likely as not, they'll lock the slide open when it's empty, too.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/2982345595?pid=825518

I have five 9mm 1911s, and these have worked well in all of them, but each pistol can be fussy. Yes, a Super magazine will feed 9mms well enough. Any and all 9mm 1911 magazines may strip a round out of the magazine from tiime to time, it's common, actually. I've got two Meg-gars that are abominable, they came with my Tisas Tank Commander. I won't even use them for anything important. I use them at the range now and then. I really like a round follower on a 9mm, though.

I loved Chip McCormick - I haven't tried the product from the new company. My standard has been Wilson 47D.

The only really bad mags were a pair of 10rounders from Metgar - use them for practice clearing jams.

Wilson 47D, Tripp Cobra, CMC and Check Mate. Chip McCormick is now owned by Wilson Combat but the magazines remain in the line up there. Check Mate is also very good and is the OEM supplier for several companies like Dan Wesson and Ed Brown. And Ed Brown has a magazine swap program where you can trade your old beater mags in to them and for $10 + shipping they'll send you a one on one exchange for a new Ed Brown magazine. I have nine old beater mags ready to send them right now. The Check Mate 8 rounders run my Dan Wesson just fine.

I like the cheaper Chip McCormich's right now. They are running good in all of my 1911's. Wolff springs make an extra power replacement for them and I replace the factory ones at six months then change the wolfs every 6 months if used hard.

You're all right about .45 magazines, but the OP was asking about 9mm magazines............

My Dan Wesson Vigil in 9mm runs perfect with the OEM mags it came with, they are 9 rounders.

I have a few Wilson 10 rounders that run perfect too.

I have some Wilson/Vickers ETM mags that work but are not cheap.

Out of the two Vigils I bought, neither of them has choked with any of these mags except for one ETM mag that had the spacer in backwards once and couldn’t push the next round up, no fault of the magazine or gun. The only other thing is I once found a live round in my mag carrier. The 9mm’s can spit a round out from what I’ve read but it’s only happened once.

I trust Metalform. That's all I use, pretty much.

F'n duh, question was about 9mm mags, my comments were for .45's...disregard...

Yeah shoot , bad reading on my part. Them 9mm mags are different can of worms big time.

This but in 45 ACP and 10mm, not 9mm.

After looking around at various websites and reading a bunch of reviews, it appears magazines are a lot like most mechanical products - they all work well unless they don't.

I went ahead and ordered a Wilson Combat ETM 10 rounder, the best price I found online was only about a Burger King Whopper's worth more than a lot of others and it has solid reviews everywhere you look. If it works as well as folks say for various brands of ammo I'll get another one or two.

Also ordered a 1911a1 aligner insert for my Maglula. The Maglula works okay on single stack mags without it but can be a bit awkward.

Don't you already have a Kimber switch-barrel pistol in .38 Super and 10mm? For range fun and just plinking around, try some of your .38 Super magazines in your new 9mm pistol. it won't hurt anything at all, and might even save some coin.
I have three of the Wilson ETMs, and a couple of the MecGar top-of-their-line 10 round magazines, all of which work well, but that extra round doesn't excite me that much. The MecGars came with my Stingray, the other two cheapo MecGars came with my Tank Commander, and I surely canNOT recommnend them.
Metalform used to have the contract with Colt to make magazines for them, so I figured they'd be okay, but they have weaknesses, as I mentioned earlier. I actually like the Springfield magazines about as much as anyone elses, including those high dollar ETMs.

I'm a Wilson fan in for the 45, but have had great results with McCormiks as well.

Fast forward to 1911 in 9. All my mags insert, function, & eject as needed. But a Willson is smoother all the way around. If I were in the market for a high number of mags, I might think about the cost savings with lesser brands. But otherwise, at just a few bucks more I'll go with Wilsons.

Can't speak for Tripp, but I've heard good things about them from folks I trust & that shoot a lot.