New local range had their Grand Opening yesterday complete with a host of facory reps and plenty of hardware to try. Two boomsticks stood out for their impressions so I decided to share. Both are from Taurus.
1911:
I give it a solid "Meh". Metallurgy seems ok. Overall fit and finish are about what you'd expect from a sub-$500 (street price) 1911. Accuracy was quite good for the price point though the sights were definitely not the best. The trigger, well, calling it abysmal is being generous. To begin with there was a good 1/8" of slop before it enganged. Once engaged the pull was long, gritty, notchy, and generally just plain awful. The notchiness was so bad that several times during the trigger travel it felt as if the sear had tripped without the hammer falling. It's the first SA trigger I've ever seen that actually stacked up at the end of the travel! At the end it requiring what I guesstimate to be a 7 or 8 lb final press to fire. Why Taurus sent a gun with this bad a trigger as a shootable marketing sample is beyond me. However, aside from the terrible trigger the gun is a decent shooter for someone wanting a budget 1911.
Curve:
A resounding "no". I can appreciate the concept, but in real life there's simply no reason for buying this gun unless your ONLY form of carry is IWB. In terms of size it's huge compared to other guns in that market segment. It's roughly the same overall size and dimensions as my Ruger LCP while in its holster (a DeSantis Nemesis). The integral laser sight may be cool but it fuglies up the gun and makes it a blocky, chunky brick compared to other pocket 380s. The trigger opening is way too small for anyone with even modestly thick fingers. The trigger pull is decently smooth and typical pocket DAO long and heavy but it stacks severely right at the end of the travel, adding several lbs to the pull. The trigger travels deep into a recess in the frame before the sear trips, so deep that my finger was bottoming on the frame before the trigger reached full pull. The only way around it was switching from finger pad to fingertip trigger technique. The strange design results in less grip length than even my diminutive LCP. This, combined with the long trigger pull and strange finger-blocking trigger recess, makes controllability a problem. Overall there's just no reason for this gun to exist save one very narrow carry type, and even then an LCP, TCP, or P3AT with a side clip would be dimensionally smaller and likely just as comfortable.
Brad