This was not "Ol' Slabside's finest era, for that you need to go backward from the middle-latter 1960's. Interesting enough, we seldom see complaints posted about guns made in this era. And it would seem that no one has anything bad to say about earlier guns.
Well, this has a lot to do with there being a whole lot less of these (now) older guns being even shot today by new shooters. Those guns are now well-broken in and fixed, and most are retired to the gun safes.
You'll always hear more complaints about currently-sold merchandise vs. older merchandise in all product areas in our society for the same reason . . . because that's what current consumers are buying and using . . . at any given time in history.
FACT . . .
There were times, not to many decades ago, when one typically could NOT go out and buy a brand new Colt 1911 and expect it to be reliable at all. Oh how we sometimes forget.
This, of course, was pre-internet forum days, so us old timers just bitched between each other at the range . . . and a LITTLE of this dissatisfaction would sometimes eek out into the pages of gun magazines we bought that frankly just catered to selling advertising from those same companies (making the crappy guns that didn't work out of the box) so NEW buyers would buy a new gun from them. You know what I'm taking about.
THE TWO REAL GOOD THINGS THAT CAME OUT OF THE "CRAPPY" AGE?
1. Colt's lack of reliability back then (as well as the few other companies then making 1911s) helped spawn an incredible amount of aftermarket suppliers who made high grade parts us buyers demanded that the companies refused to give us!
2. Just as important to all of us serious shooters, AND to the survivability and popularity of the 1911 of today . . . it helped launch many a gunsmith into successful businesses in every state . . . to make those jam-o-matic and/or inaccurate 1911s run as they
should have run out of the box from the beginning!
Hopefully you are not saying that the hundreds of thousands of .45 pistols turned out between 1942 to 1945 "weren't reliable until they were properly tweaked by a REAL gunsmith," are you?
OF COURSE NOT! Those were made like the AK-47s of today! Looser 'n schidt, they would shuck just about any old cartridge you fed 'em. Drop it in the mud, get sand in it, and the thing would always shoot!
As an old grizzled drill sargeant told me years ago as a new recruit, "If you want to pick out a GOOD .45, SHAKE 'EM! A reliable one will rattle a lot!"
There was a lot of truth to that too. These wouldn't jam and leave the poor G.I. helpless to the charging Jap's bayonet. Then again, they were also the .45s that created the belief in many people that one couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a G.I. 45!
A highly accurate 1911 .45 will be a tightly fit one . . . but one that doesn't jam, that the two concepts are hard to make work without accurate manufacture and gunsmithing skill. CNC manufacture has allowed the industry to give us more reliable 1911s due to higher tolerance fits. Of course, it is still up to the factory workers to adjust the fit of a tight tolerance gun. Kimber brought the 1911 into the CNC age!
[No, the great bulk of complaints are about guns that were made recently, and your favorite maker, Kimber seems to be at the top of the list right now.[/QUOTE]
First, I never claimed Kimber was my favorite maker. Like my internet "name" implies, I'm a rabid, die-hard S&W wheelgun fan! My favorite custom N-frames are too wide and heavy to carry concealed usually, so I use a compact 1911 "bottom feeder" for this purpose.
What I said is that I MY early Kimber that has been utterly reliable AND accurate. This is a fact. If it bobbled at all I would have traded it off in a heartbeat years ago!
Later, the early type II Kimbers had problems with the external extractors. During this time they garnered a reputation on the internet sites as "jam-o-matics" and from a company that was rude and didn't care. Ironically, the internet crowd also buzzed with positive comments when Kimber released it's initital CNC-made products that were much cheaper and more reliable than the old guns made using the older, more expensive ways.
Kimber's entry into the marketplace woke up a lot of old, complacent companies and Kimber's greatest contribution to the history of the 1911 may just be that it forced the 1911 into a new period of better-fitting guns at good prices due to the introduction of CNC methods.
And while all sizes come in for some flack, the sub-compacts seem to get more then what you'd expect would be their share.
You surely can't argue with the laws of physics! This will always be true, and the manufacturing excellence MUST be there in a small 1911 auto or you'll have problems! Mine . . . is wonderful.
Think not? Well go to the search feature and use the key word "Kimber."
I'm on various forums of various high-end products, and there are always a lot of "experts" who chime in on various issues who are simply repeating commonly heard gripes . . . and yet who have absolutely no experience with the products being mentioned.
Surely, this is also a fact on this forum at times. Not always of course, but you know for a fact that this is so on this one.
I'm in business (but not in firearms), and we've read that a happy customer tells only six people but an unhappy customer tells 41 . . . and grips about their experience for an average of seven years.
While Colt slept, the Kimber company roared into the marketplace and sold a ton of guns while Colt was considering stopping all 1911 production and discontinuing most of it's models. I'm sure you remember that period too. With lots of products come lots of silent, happy customers . . . and lots of unhappy customers who will gripe for years and tell lots of people. It is a numbers game.
I've reported my very, very positive experience with my earlier Kimber. Would I buy a brand new one today to go with my original one. Absolutely NOT . . . for I'm no Roy Rogers . . . I don't tote twin guns!
I could have recommended to the original poster to trade his Colt 1991 for an Ed Brown, Les Baer or several other top compacts. However, those firearms ain't even close to the price range of his original gun. The Kimber would be comparable to the price he would net having into his Colt after he paid a gunsmith to upgrade his Colt, and I imagine it would make him very, very happy.
I've had various gunsmiths work on my older generation Colt 1911s before. Some gunsmiths are great, some mediocre, and some should never be allowed to work on a client's gun. It is always a crapshoot when you give your expensive gun to a 1911 gunsmith, unless you join a year-long waiting period for one of the famous gurus. Even then, I'm sure they'd tell you there are some people they couldn't satisfy no matter what they did.
Thanks for writing! I don't disagree with you of course, but there are lots of Kimber owners who have had no problems with their firearms.
T.
