Seems like after nearly 100 years of 1911's, magazines would be a non-issue.
If the design was stable, it would be. The problem is that so many people make so many different 1911 designs, in so many varying degrees of fidelity to original spec*, that it creates a LOT of confusion about what works well.
Take a milspec (both in design and execution) 1911 and a milspec (both in design and execution) 1911 magazine, and things will msot likely be just fine. The problems come when you start changing variables, either intentionally through design or unintentionally due to sloppy manufacture. A lot of 1911s on the market today are a real hodgepodge of dubious "features" and questionable execution. The same can be said of the magazines. Most of the time stuff works acceptably well, but when you start stacking variances from spec, you will eventually start to induce malfunctions. The magazine is usually blamed for this when it is a feed error, because changing the magzine can fix the error, so it must be the mag, right? Wrong. You may have just switched to a mag that is further out of spec, or out of spec in a different way, but works well with an out of spec gun.
There's not too much wrong with running an out-of-spec gun with an out-of-spec magazine as long as it works. The problems are in diagnosing the errors and figuring out how to fix them, and the unintended consequences that can show up later as parts wear oddly.
Mike
* Throughout this, when I say "spec" or "milspec", I'm referring to the original design, as given from on high by the Archangel Michael to the prophet J. Moses Browning. I'm not a flaming partisan that demands that everyone's 1911 be as JMB originally intended, but you have to admit the old plain jane guns usually work. Start fiddling, and the reliability issues are on you.
