S&B or Magtech 9mmP

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Hunter2011

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S&B 115gr JHP or Magtech 115gr JHP
Which of these two economical rounds do you prefer and why? They are just a little bit more expensive than FMJ range ammo, so they might not be the best out there, but I suppose they will do?
Do anyone have any ballistic data for them in a 3.2'' barrel?
 
Just on name, I would go with Magtech. I have never been a fan of S&B; don't like their .32 ACP, .303, or 7.62x54R. That's enough for me to decide.
 
I would buy which ever has the lower price. I've shot both brands though a lot more S&B and have no complaint about either. Neither is better than the other IMO.
 
I have shot thousands of rounds of S&B over the years. It may just be my imagination but I find it to be a little " hotter" than US made 115 gr. 9mm like the Federal Champion or WWB. I like S&B. I have fired a lot of .45 ammo as well.
 
Ok, my reason for asking was that I see the OL of the S&B is a lot less than the Magtech ammo. I thought that might cause them to miss feed or something. But if they are reliable why not.
I also don't like S&B ammo, but only because I got misfires with them in my S&W .22LR pistol. The same batch of S&B's did not give any misfires in my CZ452 rifle though. But as I never got problems with CCI for example in the same pistol, I did believe that S&B is not as good as I hoped. But this is center fire ammo, so I hope I will get better results with them.
 
Never had any problems with S&B 9mm 115 gr FMJ. And I've used lots of it. Never had any problems with Magtech either.
 
I have used a ton of S&B in 9mm,380,and .32 ACP without one single issue.
Too me it's a bit cleaner than Mag-Tech.
But both run fine in my pistols.
 
From my understanding, they headspace on the front of the casing. So if the cases are the same length, but the bullet sits shorter than the maximum OAL for the cartridge, then you should be fine.

I'm curious as to your purpose. For my 9s, I use premium ammo for SD (use enough of it to make sure it will run, and then just store the rest in my mags) and I practice with FMJ ammo for economic reasons. I wouldn't want to use generic JHP in a 9mm (I am comfortable with it in .40 or .45).
 
Hi Skribs.
Why would you not want to use generic JHP in a 9mm?
My purpose: I want to get the best accuracy as economically as possible. I don't shoot much at the range, with the exception of .22LR, so I don't mind paying a bit more for the cheap hollow pointers. I found them to be more accurate than ball ammo anyway. Premium ammo will be too expensive to plink with at the range for me. I also want to carry what I practice with.
I'm just concerned that the much shorter AOL of the JHP S&B ammo can give feeding problems. But if they don't and can be more accurate than the Magtech's, then I would rather buy them.
At worst case they will act as ball ammo so all is not lost.
 
I figure that for 99.9% of the situations where I would need to fire my gun in self defense, I will not notice a difference between my FMJs and my JHPs as far as POI is concerned. I don't shoot enough to really notice the difference between ammo. So when I do practice, it's fine if I'm using FMJ.

With rounds on the weak end of JHP-acceptable (so .38 SPC, .380 ACP, 9mm), I think it's worth it to get the premium ammo. You are right, at worst it's like FMJ. But I want something known for reliable expansion and penetration, as opposed to something that might just zip through or expand too far and fail to penetrate. In the case of the .380, I decided it was worth it to just carry ball ammo.

The bigger and/or faster your bullets go, the easier it is for the bullet engineers to make them work properly. That, and a .40 or .45 failed-to-expand is better than a 9mm failed-to-expand. That's why I just carry generic JHPs in my bigger handguns. I practice with the slightly cheaper FMJs, and those have more similarities (that of course I don't have a subtle enough feel to notice).

This is just my opinion, of course. I've sort of set up a 3-tier system for handgun rounds:
Tier 1, use FMJ
Tier 2, use premium JHP
Tier 3, use generic JHP

9mm falls in Tier 2 for me. .38 and .380 are the upper end of Tier 1.
 
Just some feedback for those interested.
Today I shot with both. But with the Magtech's I had failure to feed every time I had to load the first round in the chamber. When I press the slide release, it simply got stuck on the feeding ramp. I could manage to load it manipulating the slide manually. And to think I carried this gun with this ammo BEFORE testing it...
But after the first round gets in, feeding during shooting was 100% fine.
So far, except for the loading issues with Magtech JHP, this gun had no failures of any kind.
 
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