Bfox, glad to hear of your sucess. I love my Pro-1000's. I had one Pro-1000 and one Dillon. I sold the Dillon and bought 3 more new Pro-1000s with the money. Now I have a press already set up for each pistol caliber I load. No die changing, no power adjustments etc. I still use single stage presses for the rifle stuff.
A few tricks I've learned over the years will will help a lot.
1) Remove the entire Primer shut-off mechanism, let the primers ALWAYS slide right down. If you want to shut off the primer flow use a small piece of plastic or a dowl or something. Push it in the way of the primers as they slide down. - I use a small hex key that just fits in the plastic primer shoot. This one move fixes 95% of the problems with the Lee.
2) Go to Lowes or Home Depot and get a stronger STEEL ball-chain for the powder return and look for a longer softer spring.
3) You know that open bolt hole on the top left - Put in a 1/4 bolt with a few wide washers and lock down the three hole turret to remove all play. Use a wing nut for fast removal. Your loaded rounds will now have their OAL deviation as small as any progressive made.
There you go, three simple quick changes that will make your Lee presses work better and just as well as anyone's. For the record - I reload about 20,000 rounds a year, I shoot a lot of longs range handgun events and can't tell any difference between Lee loaded rounds and Dillon loaded rounds. If I were only going to own ONE press and load ONE caliber for the rest of my life, I would probably stick with the Dillon. For multiple calibers I find the multiple smaller Lees a better solution. Both companies are OK to deal with and I've had less problems with the Lee presses.
be safe
Elliot
