barrell swap continued
So I figured that it'd be a good idea to follow up on my progress for anyone who'd be interested to know.
I just got off the phone with EAA and despite all the bad press they've gotten all over the web, the customer service girl was courteous and helpful. A company can live or die by simple word of mouth, so I suppose that any bad reputation they've had in the past may have encouraged them to do a better job of it. At any rate, after discussing some options I bought the 10mm long slide barrel, recoil spring and 3 10mm mags.
Although not listed on their website, they do indeed carry the full long slide conversion for the Elite Match, but since both the .40 cal and 10mm share the same case dimensions other than case length, buying the parts minus the slide saved me $120 over the full conversion. Doing so allowed me to get a 3-pack of the 10mm magazines so I didn't have to hammer out the strip at the front of the .40 mags I have now and buy new followers. I'd surely **** that operation up and probably end up having to buy new mags anyway. Just better to get the right mags for the job. I will, of course have the barrel fitted and tuned to the slide when it arrives, I'm doing this all on a budget, but don't want to unnecessarily cut corners and end up blowing off a hand in the process. I suppose that I may end up spending my savings on gunsmithing, but it's a chance I'll take for now. I can always purchase the slide later if absolutely necessary.
Now then, this part may belong in another section of the forum, but I'll let the moderators decide that. Although I've shot pistols in the past (mostly revolvers), I'm still sorta new to this game. It took me a long time to decide on a final purchase. I had the Witness in mind most of the time because of the calibur conversion availability, design, price and round capacity. It's only by happenstance and just plain old good luck that I landed on the Witness Match as opposed to the other various versions and I'm glad I did. There's as much really bad word of mouth press online about them as there is good....probably more. It definitely tempers a purchase. What has surprised me is that most of the talk is about various other Witness versions and very little on the Match. Most chatter is about a lot of the earlier versions and Henning's site is mostly about the competition guns. There just isn't a definitive resource specifically on the Elite Match. I'm not sure this will serve as such, and I don't want to overdo an already lengthy post, but I'll briefly detail my own experience so far and share what I have learned so far of the weapon that I know.
My gun is the Witness Elite Match .40 cal. with the duo-tone finish. The best I've been able to gather is that these were introduced in 2006 and are Tanfoglio custom shop tuned to be competition level but at a production price. The tag attatched to mine at the time I bought it had 2008 written on it, but I'm aware this could just be the import date. I didn't think to get the production date while I had EAA customer service on the phone. I bought mine at a Portland, OR gun show in December for $450. I picked up a lot of guns and in my honest opinion, it had the best feel of any available. Better than the CZ's even. Rear sight is micro-adjustable and I've upgraded the front sight post to fiber optic. I also bought 2 spare mags, as the gun only comes with one. Mags needed to be tuned a little, but they have functioned reliably so far. 10mm and .40 cal mags hold 15 rounds, by the way.
It's a very easy gun to become familiar with for a novice like myself and shoots like a dream. Trigger is crisp, easy to sight in and out of 478 rounds through it so far, only ONE failure to feed. First 100 rounds were Wally-world cheapo 100 round box of Winchester and the last 378 were ghetto factory reloads from the gun show. Of all the bad things I've read about the Witness line, I would have to emphatically say that NONE of it applies to this particular weapon. Right out of the box it exceeded all of my expectations. For anyone considering a first handgun purchase and as confused as I was on the shere number of guns available, I can whole-heartedly make a strong recommendation for this model without reservation. It feels like a gunsmith finely tuned it before I bought it and didn't charge me a dime for their work.
I've gone a bit long here, but I thought it appropriate to share one last item. Concerning the firing pin recall that is mentioned on EAA's website, the recall is for gun serial #'s beginning with "AE". The Match serials begin with "EA", so are not part of the firing pin saftey notice.
I hope this information is helpful to anyone considering a Witness Match purchase.