Wish mine was here. Did a pre-order, they said hopefully in a few weeks. Got for 1400.
Springfield makes solid 1911s, I gotta believe this thing will be too.
What's your first impression of it?
I didn't get a chance to shoot it yet, sadly. I happened to take Thursday off of work because I had parent-teacher conferences in the afternoon, and around 10 a.m. I see on Facebook that my local gun store has Prodigies, so I thought I'd mosey on over and take a look. So around noon I go over, and lo and behold, they have two, one Commander and one Government. A couple people have come by to look at them already, but nobody bought one. $1,500 is relatively cheap for a 2011, but it's still a hefty chunk of change, so I went home, packed my range bag, and brought some guns to trade in that I hadn't shot in a while or had another gun to fill the same role. I was thinking I'd buy it, and then I would bring 100 rounds of ammo and test it right there.
Well, the gunsmith was the only one who could price trade-in guns, and he was busy mounting a scope for someone, and then I had to run back home to get the original grips for a revolver I traded in, and then the sales guy running my background got caught up helping several customers, and before you know it, I don't finish the purchase until 2:12 p.m., and I had to be at parent-teacher conferences at 2:30 p.m., and that was almost 20 miles away.
So I didn't get to the range, and then today I'm seeing my kids, and tomorrow I'm out of town, but hopefully Sunday I'll get to shoot it.
My initial impressions just from handling:
1. I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't been able to handle it first. SA makes some good 1911s, but I wasn't going to give them $1,500 without knowing that the fit and finish exceeds that of their $800 1911s. In that it broadly does. Particularly, the grip safety and thumb safety are blended into the frame and grip module pretty well. This isn't always done well on Staccatos that cost $800 more, but again, I would want to inspect the actual gun I'm getting rather than trusting in an online purchase, unless I saw pictures of the exact gun I was getting. The slide-to-frame fit is pretty good, as is the barrel fitting. The ejector is flush. The extractor is a little proud, but not much, and clearly within SA's specs because the extractor is beveled around the edge.
2. The trigger is not the greatest for a 1911, but in my opinion a not-the-greatest 1911 trigger is still way beyond all but the very best striker-fired triggers, which often require custom work. Plus at the $1,500 price point, you could get a great trigger job done and still be saving $600 over a Staccato P even if your trigger job is expensive and you have to ship the gun. There is some mushiness and creep, and it is perhaps heavier than it needs to be. I don't have a trigger pull measure, but it seemed on the high side for a 1911, maybe 4.5-5 lbs? My Dan Wesson trigger is better. That being said, I got my DW used, so perhaps the Prodigy trigger will smooth up with time even if you don't have trigger work done.
I do think that the Prodigy has the feel of a $1,500 gun. That is, I can see some small differences between it and a $1,800 or $2,500 1911 for sure, but it is also much nicer looking and feeling than an $800 1911 proportionate to the relative prices.
3. The grip frame is a big improvement to me over the Gen 2 Staccato grip, which I find unnecessarily sharp in the process of being grippy. The wraparound texture is identical to the Hellcat texture, and it's real nice. Obviously it's a double-stack 2011, so the grip is fairly chunky, but it's not too much so. I thought it felt very full in my hand but not as uncomfortable as I personally find stock Glocks. The fit and finish on the grip frame was quite good as well. I have seen a Staccato or two with some ragged finishes on the plastic molding seems, and some recurring minority of Staccatos seem to have poorly blended grip safeties into the grip module, but that was not the case on either Prodigy I handled.
4. A Staccato overall is definitely a better gun in terms of trigger and overall fit and finish, and if you were buying either the SA or the Staccato in person you can make sure you get one with a good grip safety blend and good QC on the grip module.
BUT...
... I'm not convinced that the Staccato (P model, since that's the one comparable to the SA 1911 DS commander-size gun) is an
$800 better gun. This actually puts Staccato in a bind, since now if the SA 1911 DS becomes popular and successful, a lot of people will choose to lose 10% quality to Staccato in exchange more than a 33% price reduction, while others will bite the bullet and pay more to go to Atlas Gunworks instead.
5. The big concern I have is reliability. Dura-Mag is the magazine OEM, and 2011s are, from what I hear, famously dependent on quality magazines to run reliably. I'd never heard of Dura-Mag, and I don't think they've made a 2011 magazine. So I have a sneaking concern that magazine quality may negatively impact the gun's reliability, so I'd really like to see an extensive shooting review from someone who has both a Staccato and a Prodigy so they can compare them and see if any reliability issues with the Prodigy resolve by using Staccato magazines.
