Witness 10mm: usual EAA quality control

Gents,

I grabbed a 10mm Witness recently off Gunbroker. I have had a couple before and they needed tweaking. Let them go a while back, but wanted to revisit the gun now that 15 rounders are out there. Just for those of you talking about Witnesses lately, I thought I would post my experience on first trip to the range. It is the plain blue full size model, non-ported, current revision with wider cocking serations. Nice looking, terrible double action, good single action. I ran around 200 rounds of mixed UMC, Hornady, and Federal. The following problems appeared off the bat:

1. Trigger fails to reset about once in 20-30 rounds. I have seen this on a Witness before, albeit many years ago in a first gen 9mm.

2. Rear sight drifted while shooting almost completely off to the left. Happened rather suddenly, and I caught it before it cleared the dovetail. Lucky I noticed as I was focused on the front sight. I stopped shooting at that point.

3. Failures to feed perhaps 10-15 times. Not terrible for a Witness. One mag was worse than the others, accounting for perhaps half the malfunctions. I only used new 15 round magazines, fully loaded. Failures were in no particular pattern.

If you are considering a Witness, be aware this is the pattern I have seen after owning quite a few. Most needed some attention to work. EAA won't fix them (been there, done that) so this one is off to my smith. Should be no biggie to get it working. It was very accurate, and a joy to shoot. I really hope I can get it working 100%. I won't be buying a second any time soon, though, CDNN specials not withstanding.



GR

 

I've heard great things about EAA 10s. The only complaint about EEA 10s was medicore accuracy. For the price, I was told they were great values. I know years ago on the IPSC circuit, the EAA was very popular but durability was an issue with major loads. Tales of what you are experiencing with your sights were.....well popular. Im sure EAA has addressed most if not all these problems. Im assuming you might have a older model which didnt go through any "updates" to keep sights on the slide and functioning properly. Wishfull thinking????

 

I must have gotten VERY lucky.
When I first got my 10mm witness it jammed a lot, the back of the round being fed would kick up and cause a jam. Replacing the spring with a Wolff 22# utterly solved that problem.
Trigger is super sweet, it points nicely. It's the most accurate semi auto I own.

But you MUST replace the recoil spring.

 

Most Witness pistols are good, some are bad. If you have a good one, hang onto it. If you have a bad one, find a good gunsmith or become a gunsmith, EAA's customer support has a really bad reputation.

 

Sorry to hear your problems.

My witness is a nice 10mm. Reliable, accurate and great trigger out of the box.

I guess you got a bummer. Send it down the road and get it fixed or just buy another one and use yours for parts. They are darn cheap for what you get.

 

Brand new model with the new slide cuts. Nice looking really. My smith will handle it as EAA argued every time I had to deal with them before. I was going to have a trigger job anyway so might as well do the works. Perhaps a different rear sight too.

I got to thinking back over past Tanfoglio products I had owned, and came up with this list (if memory serves as all but two of these guns are long gone):

1. TZ-75 9mm: needed throating/polishing to feed anything, never fed hollow points.
2. Witness 9mm: frame cracked at around 500 rounds. Replaced by EAA after much complaining. Sold replacement gun.
3. Witness 9mm compact: no problems.
4. Witness 40: no problems.
5. Witness 38 Super special edition: won't feed past 15 rounds in mags. Needs polish, just have not gotten to it in 10 years.
6. Witness 45 Carry Comp: no problems.
7. Witness 9mm full size: trigger would not reset reliably, EAA refused to fix it, returned to dealer for refund.
8. Witness 10mm Target Ported: needed feed ramp polish.
9. Witness 10mm Target Ported: needed feed ramp polish.
10. Witness 10mm full-size: noted above.

Interestingly three baby eagles all were 100% out of the box. IMI definately has better quality control.

GR

 

Tanfoglio makes the Baby Eagle slides and frames.
Hmmm, I have had 6 Witness pistols, compact and full size, 9mm and 40SW, and not one ever needed any work of any kind. I will say I have not bought a NEW Witness in over 4 years, but that was a financial issue. I carried a Witness 40 for 13+ years, shout thousands of rounds through it, and it worked perfectly every time. My wife carried a Witness compact 40, and loved it. Only financial trouble forced us to sell, and we now have CZs, and love them too. Go figure....hopefully Tanfolgio will find another importer someday.

 

That or CZ will come out with a 97 in 10mm.

GR

 

I fail to see how changing importers will help with the factory's poor QC. A more motivated importer could help by more quickly and easily remedying problems (from what I've read, this is sorely needed) that crop up after purchase, but it will do nothing to reduce the return rate. Now if the guns are imported as parts and assembled in the US, then a change of importers can lead to dramatic changes (not necessarily all good) in QC.

EAA/Tangfolio has alot of good stuff. Prices are excellent. Maybe if the factory channels a bit more energy into making sure these guns are right when they come from the factory, they'd enjoy a greater following.

Speaking for myself, I have no patience trying to work through reliability problems. I'm more likely to trade the gun on something else than spend more time and/or money fixing something that should have been caught from the factory. Occasionally, I'll buy something for tinkering purposes. Only then will I work with it.

 

I've had good experiences with EAAs though I've only bought one brand new. The rest were used from people I trusted so... who knows. I do prefer CZs. I wish CZ would come out with more slightly larger 75-based guns in 45, 38 Super, 9x23, 10mm etc... The 97 is very nicely put together and with that blue finish, is just beautiful but it's too large for me.

 

Changing importers might help if the importer held Tanfoglio to a higher standard, but that is a good point Southpaw. The IMI stuff works well out of the box despite its Tanfoglio origins, likely due to the final fit & finish being done in Israel. Springfield Armory got better results from Tanfoglio than EAA did when they sold the P9/40 series. I suspect EAA just tells Tanfoglio to ship them as cheap as possible and not to worry about quality control. Makes for more room for profit by EAA. It will be interesting to see what the Turkish, Tanfoglio based pistols are like when Interordnance gets them here. No large frame models though.

I got this gun expecting problems that would be fairly easy to handle. No shock after shooting it. My smith will ID what the trigger is hanging on, replace the rear sight with a better one I picked out, and give it a good feed/function job. Should make a nice final product that will suit my purposes. It boils down to the fact that the CZ pattern frame fits my hand like a glove and it holds 15 rounds of my favorite cartridge. It is a shame that it did not work out of the box as I would have it in the rotation sooner.

GR