MSAR made some gun goods, and MSAR made some irreparable ones. I wouldn't touch a 1st generation one (forward assist), and I wouldn't even bother looking at an MSAR unless the price was below $1k. Around 2 years ago, CDNN was blowing out MSARs at $1k, and nowadays a real AUG A3 can be bought for $1600-$1700.
Tony Marfione designed the MSAR rifles to be different than the AUG spec. The end result is a gun that is mostly proprietary. That is to say, Steyr AUG parts and barrels will not fit. Will you be able to get parts in the future? I wouldn't count on it.
There were some questionable manufacturing processes taking place at MSAR Inc. Barrels were honed with one person holding a hand drill in one hand, and the barrel in the other. They completely disregarded the science and reasoning behind the HPT/MPI order. They bought barrels from Green Mountain that were spec'd to have been Magnetic Particle Inspected. Once MSAR received the barrels, they then fired the HPT rounds without inspecting them via MPI afterwards. Tony was quoted as saying something along the lines of "If a barrel can hold up to 3 proof loads, it's good to ship." This is, of course, completely backwards and hopefullyt nobody has a barrel blow up in their face as a result of this nonsense.
MSAR themselves destroyed the market for their guns. They changed the specs, put out lemons, used potentially unsafe proofing methods, screwed over their barrel vendor, then dropped the selling price of their guns from $1600 to $1000 overnight. Next thing you know, MSAR filed for bankruptcy, only to come back with a website later on showing pictures of rifles sitting in racks. "Oh great! MSAR is back!"
Microtech makes awesome knives with horrible customer service. I would stay away from their rifles, unless you want to play with one and the price is well below $1k. I would recommend buying a real Steyr AUG A3 and having something much more sustainable in the long run.
