Top H&K poll- for the H&K owners and enthusiasts!

[Fishbed77]

Sensitive? No, just sick and tired of the same nonsense over and over again. Can't mention a fine gun, even in a frivolous opinion thread such as this, without the bird calls. It's a big gun... so what? So is the Elite, so is the Match. Get over it.

No one is disputing that the Mark 23 is a fine gun. It's also a big gun compared to many .45ACP auto-loaders. Not sure why you think this is "nonsense."

Obviously, you are somewhat irrationally sensitive to this issue, considering that you have twice felt the need to weigh in on the subject in an attempt to belittle someone's observations. Especially considering this is a frivolous thread meant to be fun.

 

[hank327]

P7/M8 by far

 

[el Godfather]

It seems like every H&K thread attracts people who hate H&K just out of spite.

9mm P30 bare none!

Target/Sport Match bar none!

Offensive handgun Mark23 bar none!

Rest is just rhetoric.

Lets hear it now

 

[usp9]

bc1023 said; "The P9S Sport is my favorite HK"

That is a work of art. Very nice pistol.

 

[1KPerDay]

You H&K guys, what's the substantive difference between the P2000 and the P30? And is either much different from the USP?

H&K, where shopping is a baffling ordeal.

 

[xwingband]

P2000 and P30 differences...

-Ergonomics. P2000 has backstrap options only. The P30 has backstraps and both sides changeable. For example I run a large on the right side since I'm a righty to fill out my palm and medium on the back and left.
-Size options. P2000 has the P2000sk option for a sub-compact. P30 is larger and has the P30L longslide option.
-The mag release is a different size, P30 is larger/longer.

That's all I can think of... they're functionally the same. I'm not sure why HK is offering the P2000 anymore. I can understand the P2000sk, but not the plain one.

USP's... are a boat load of options too. I see USP > P2000 > P30/45 as an evolutionary development of their offerings. I can't remember all the glock or sig models by their numbers so I guess it's perspective too as I find the reasoning far more baffling.

 

[Master Blaster]

I have an Elite and it is a great pistol match grade and more affordable than the other comparable Hks like the MK23.

 

[tommy.duncan]

I have a lot more experience with H&K rifles. I do own a full size USP and it is an amazing pistol. That is what I voted for. Their are a lot of good posts here!!

 

[Girodin]

USP9, still curious as to whether you have actually ever used the MK23 and/or the HK45.

 

[B!ngo]

CountZer0 (below) just nailed it so right.
I am a bit of an H&K dog - having to buy a few extras so that my wife and I can each have our own set. Each a pair of P7M8's (hers not having ever been shot yet); I/we have a P7M13; I a left-hand light LEM USP full size/9mm and she with a right hand light LEM USP compact/9mm. To top it off, an ATI AT94 - essentially an MP5 design identical to the MP94 - built in Turkey on the H&K manufacturing line/equipment. Roller lock PCC perfection.
My favorite? Same as CountZed. The P7. I prefer the capacity of the M13 but the M8 just fits my average size hand better. I'm left handed so the ambi design just works for me. And it seems like the safest pistol design ever constructed. And though I'm not a fan of the round, I still hold out hope that I'll find a perfect P7M10 (in 40S&W) someday. And ditto one of those convertible .22LR etc models as well. One can dream, right?
I will say that although I also like the USP, I believe time has come that to build a quality and state of the art pistol requires a striker fire design and that a DA/SA with hammer is just a thing of the past. I know others will flame but that first DA pull is just bad design to me and must go. The light LEM approximates what a proper striker fire design accomplishes but it is a hack compared to the proper design of modern strikers. H&K needs to move on and I'm sure that when they do, I'll find room in the safe for one of those new ones to come. Probably two of course
B

I bought an HK P7M8 in 1985 and I have stuck with it. At the time I think it was the smallest 9mm out there from a major manufacturer. I can CCW, but it's fixed poly barrel and overall high quality made it a very accurate pistol so I wasn't sacrificing anything for that compactness.

I also thought it was the best answer ever for the safety debate. I didn't worry about having to remember to take the manual safety off, on the other hand I didn't have to worry about it being cocked on a live round. The trigger is great - I never had to deal with DA/SA or DOA issues.

As much as I like to fire other pistols, I don't train with them. I "train" only with my HK P7M8. I know I can't use an SA pistol for for SD. If I were ever in a critical situation now and had one, I'd be sqeezing both the grips and the trigger and nothing else. I would have to do a lot of re-training. And there are issues with other pistol actions... decocking and all that.

I've loved this pistol from the very start. I wish now that I had purchased 6 of them, one to carry, one to keep by my bed, one to keep in my car, one to take to the range, one to just have in the safe so I could say to myself "HK P7M8 NIB NEVER fired - worth $1975 he he he he" and one to put under glass so I could gaze fondly at it's beauty from time to time.

BTW.. I read a lot of talk about "break in periods" for pistols. I have never had a failure of any kind with this pistol period. I've never put reloads through it, but I've used almost every major brand of ammo from 115 to 147gr and never had a problem.

This discussion reminds me of why I love my HK P7M8 so much.

God ! It is such a fantastic gun !

Thank you Germans !!!

 

[IdahoHk416]

I voted for the P7. They are awesome guns.

 

[usp9]

USP9, still curious as to whether you have actually ever used the MK23 and/or the HK45.

Do not own nor have I used either HK45 yet. Most others, yes. Perhaps my attachment to the MK23 stems from it being the first to have such features, the template for the USP line, and thus later models. The capabilities, accuracy and robust and sea worthy nature... all in a package the same weight as a standard 1911A1. I find that remarkable. Call me old fashioned, but I think it's a great pistol.

 

[el Godfather]

Amazingly nothing for Expert whereas it's a great shooter. More interesting are votes in the other category. What did I miss?

 

[gym]

I voted other, as I like the LEM trigger on the P 30, in any caliber. It has a smooth consistent break.

 

[boricua9mm]

I choose the P7 in either the original format or in the M8 rendition.

I always considered myself an "HK guy." Owned a handful of the pistols, owned a 93A3 for a little while, and still own (and will always own) an MP5 clone SBR. I just can't seem to give too much credit to most of their modern offerings.

Had the USP45f for a long time. The combination of weak mag springs and extractor issues put the "liability" in "reliability" and I don't mean that in a good way. A search for "USP45 failure to feed" turns up lots of entertaining reading. I liked the gun, but it wasn't 100% reliable without switching mag springs and taking out the extractor for cleaning every 1,000 rounds. An HK shouldn't be like that. It had to go.

I had the P2000; I hoped it would be a better option than a Glock 19, but it wasn't. Oberndorf saw fit to use a high profile slide combined with the single recoil spring & buffer arrangement. The end result was a gun that had more recoil and muzzle rise than any other 9mm I've ever owned or shot. It too went bye bye.

I have a lot of hands-on experience wit the HK45, and for me the trough in the trigger rubs my finger raw. I also don't care for the recoil characteristics when compared to the USP45f. The geniuses at Oberndorf put the same aforementioned trigger trough in the P30, so it's automatically off the list.

The P7 is a marvel of engineering, not to mention a classic example of top-notch manufacturing and QA/QC. It has many characteristics that make it an ideal firearm for personal protection, among them an amazing trigger, natural grip angle, low-mass slide, a low bore axis and an extremely effective recoil reduction method. The worst Ican say about the P7 is that it gets hot.

Until HK makes a real-deal G19/G26 killer with a nice, constant trigger pull, a striker, a lower bore axis with a lower-mass slide, then I will keep depending on my ugly, soul-less Glocks. Believe me, I wish someone would finally beat Glock at their own game, but it doesn't appear that this has happened yet. At the present time, I think Steyr, Caracal and Walther have a better grasp of these concepts than HK does.

By and large, HK makes great pistols, but so far the P7 is the only one for me!

 

[Drifting Fate]

I voted other. I think the other the best they ever built was the P7M8, while only the P7M13 was listed and that was a brick, IIRC.

 

[Nom de Forum]

I voted for the HK4 because it is four guns in one.

 

[barnbwt]

Oh God, I think I'm gonna vomit...

Why the hell did this show up when I googled 'H&K P7 Internal Parts?" ... ... ...I feel much better, now.

All I wanted to see was close ups of the high quality internals, since I've heard/believed the refrain unanimously and have actually never really looked into it. I'm mainly curious how they stack up against, say, a P210 whose shiny/jewel-like parts are obviously a labor intensive ordeal. I found a video that did a field-strip and grip removal, and while a brilliantly designed and executed piece, it doesn't seem noticeably better made than other quality guns. Mainly, it's simplicity and low parts count would suggest it should have substantially undercut its competition (obviously H&K's extensive testing of what has to be each and every gun produced buoy the price back up a lot, but it still seems odd that it cost as much as it did).

http://www.how-to-diy.org/kIXb1FiXZIT2D0/Inside-the-Heckler-&-Koch-P7-H&K.html
Here's the video I found on the innards that seemed to give a good (but not very charismatic) rundown. I immediately notice that the R51's got nuthin' on the P7 when it comes to takedown being a chore; unscrewing the back of the slide seems like a Victorian hold-over, or something

Also, don't take this as me contradicting actual owners, because I can't (and never will) speak from experience, but the trigger/sear design as I see it operating in youtube vids doesn't seem particularly likely to be nice or light for a single action. Rather, it looks like it has quite a bit of take up to drop the sear, which is itself under a ton of tension which can't possibly help the trigger pull. Obviously H&K did a ton of work to clean it up as well as they reportedly did, but compared to other striker designs I've looked at or hammers especially, this one doesn't seem particularly optimized for pull quality; it looks brilliantly simple, but 'functional' rather than exceptional. I half wonder if the solid/tight grip required to cock the gun makes the perceived trigger pull lighter (which, from a practical standpoint, is just as good as making the trigger lighter, but with none of the drawbacks of doing so )


This crap is why the guns were too expensive to market, btw (Really? they spent money developing a muzzle turret to shoot through glass accurately? )

 

[Nom de Forum]

barnbwt,

Wow! You mean to tell me guns other than Glocks can blow-up? Who would have thought that could happen?

Seriously, do you know the story behind that unfortunate P7?

 

[barnbwt]

I'd assume some sort of tactical nuclear device went off out of battery. I honestly don't know, and that image was honestly near the top of my search results, and I honestly found it's shockingness hilarious. The guns are plenty stout, so I imagine it was some sort of horrific overcharge/simultaneous out of battery incident. That or H&K discovering that bullets made from RDX are a bad idea. I'm saving that next image for the next time someone says a gun looks like Flash Gordon's

TCB

 

[boricua9mm]

A photo of a KB'd pistol is seldom a condemnation of the pistol, but one of profound ammo error. My P7 was manufactured in 1982. At that time, the Glock had already debuted and was already making its mark. The P7 being cheaper to produce than it's counterparts? I don't think so.

If you look at schematics, the P7 has 56 parts versus Glock's 47. Aside from the grip panels, the P7 is comprised of all steel, whereas the Glock obviously benefits from the simpler, cheaper Polymer molding. Heckler and Koch chooses to use a top-secret grade of steel, mined from the Lunar core . The surface hardness of HK steel has been historically responsible for its tendency to grudgingly accept traditional blueing (and even plating) jobs. This is responsible for plum P7 slides, and the red/purple extractors and slide releases found on the newer generation of offerings.

German labor is extremely expensive; their labor force is afforded all sorts of nice protections and benefits packages from employers. To drive the price higher still, it is my understanding that Germany has its own fees for exporting firearms, in addition to what must be added on by the importer here in the US. Then, once again, we get bent by the exchange rate.

As for the trigger, you just need to shoot one. People either love or hate P7s and in my experience the trigger pull has never been a check mark in the "Hate" category. The force to maintain the cocked status of the pistol is not very much at all; just 12 lbs to cock it and as little as 1-2 lbs. to hold it in after that, if I remember it correctly. If one overexerts the force needed for cocking the pistol, then that may cause several issues with the technique of actuating the trigger, not to mention sight alignment. All in all, it's a very easy, very natural pistol to shoot, once one grasps the concept of the front cocking lever.

 

[Tennessee Ned]

Voted 2000 SK because I love its size, weight and ergonomics with the 13 round mags and x-grip adapters especially. It's a fine shooter too.

P-30 is the most comfortable pistol I've ever held in my hand though and a surprisingly soft shooter in 40 S&W.

 

[barnbwt]

"A photo of a KB'd pistol is seldom a condemnation of the pistol, but one of profound ammo error."
I don't honestly think that's even a kaboom. I don't think anything short of RDX in a 9mm case could take a steel frame (and slide) apart like that. I posted it because it came up in my search results and I was 'amazed.' I figured others would be, too, and might know the story behind it. My money's on grenade-induced demill, but it's hard to tell.

"As for the trigger, you just need to shoot one"
Yeah, I keep hearing that, and I keep not seeing them for sale at the local gun shop . I'm not contradicting anyone with experience; just saying that the vast majority of fans/haters/unaligned's have to take every description of the gun's performance on pure faith due to its scarcity. It's simply asking too much to suggest someone 'just go shoot one' (sorta like the joke about "I can't tell you how great Lost is, you'll just have to watch all 200+ hours yourself" ). My point was that in examining the inner workings of the trigger group, the design didn't look particularly optimized for short takeup, low overtravel, short reset, stiff break, or even light weight --features we typically use to describe quality triggers. It looked more like a decent-quality standard striker setup with a unique/clever cocking system; functional, but nothing to write home about as far as the trigger.

Which is why I postulated that the 10-12lb grip on the safety may be fooling shooters into thinking the trigger is lighter than it is by way of sympathetic motor responses in their fingers. Gripping the cocker preloads their trigger fingers more than consciously intended as they pull the trigger back. More smoothly, too, with fewer muscles shaking as they pull in opposite directions. If it works, it works; I'm just trying to figure out how H&K pulls off their magic tricks

"The surface hardness of HK steel has been historically responsible for its tendency to grudgingly accept traditional blueing (and even plating) jobs. This is responsible for plum P7 slides, and the red/purple extractors and slide releases found on the newer generation of offerings."
Since I'll go out on a limb and guess they aren't case-hardening their parts, that could explain why that P7 let go as dramatically as it did through brittle fracture, or whatever the heck it was (God only knows how they got stresses high enough to get to that point, though)

TCB

 

[boricua9mm]

You're missing the fact that the P7 doesn't take 10-12 lbs of force to hold. It takes that amount to cock it from the safe/inert mode. It only takes 1-2 lbs of pressure to hold it cocked once the striker is in position. If you're trembling, you're doing it wrong.

Really the only way that would impact your sight alignment would be if you were attempting to fire the pistol in one of the 2 emergency modes, which in and of themselves are yet another testament to the genius behind its design.

 

[barnbwt]

Ah, so it's like a compound bow; now I get it (can't tell that from the video showing the operation). It sounds like it still requires a solid grip, though, and since most pistols don't... my postulation still stands. The 'shaking' part I alluded to is that moving an individual finger counter to others requires some muscles to pull in opposite directions; if they all pull the same way it's slightly more controlled (which is why we don't push triggers to fire).

TCB