Ed Brown Special Forces vs Wilson Combat CQB vs Yost-Bonitz 1* Springfield Armory GI
Ed Brown Special Forces
Wilson Combat CQB
Yost-Bonits 1* Enhanced Springfield Armory GI
I have been wanting to do a comparison of $1800 1911 pattern pistols for awhile. I was somewhat holding out until I got an Rock River Arms to go with these, but figured I could always add the RRA to the list later on. In fairness, I cheated a bit with regards to the CQB in that I bought it used. I am not letting the wear frm the used gun color my perception of these pistols, and I have handled plenty of brand new CQBs to know what issues with my gun are wear related.
I'm going to give each pistol a "score" for each aspect, with 3 being the best and 1 being the worst. This is totally arbitrary, and I have no idea what the outcome will be. In many cases one aspect should be weighted higher or lower than another, but I'm just going to stick to a simple scoring system. If you like it then use it, if you don't then ignore it. We don't, however, need to hijack the thread discussing it.
I finally got the pictures taken and thought I'd at least post a few of those. I'm going to put up a separate post in the thread for each aspect of the pistols, and say which of the 3 I like the best and why for each aspect. I'm going to start with the general photos in this post.
So, on with the general pics.
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...ctiveBrown.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...tiveWilson.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...ectiveYost.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...boardBrown.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...oardWilson.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...rboardYost.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...dBrownOpen.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...WilsonOpen.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...rdYostOpen.jpg
Extractor & Ejector & Slide Rear
I don't believe that extractors need to be "timed" (i.e. fit so tight that they can't rotate in the slide) for reliability and wouldn't want a gun that did require it, so the fact that all three show some degree of rotation in this part is a non-issue for me.
The only thing that really bears mentioning here is the large gap in the slide to ejector on the Yost gun. Like the gap in the grip safety, I do not know if this has any effect on reliability or function, but it bugs the hell out of me. I assume that when Y-B bought the Springfield (I didn't send them the gun) it came like that from the factory. The difference here is that I trusted them to go over the gun before they began work on it to check for things like this and they obviously didn't. Had I purchased the gun myself to send in I would have chosen another example, but Y-B proceeded to do $1300 +/- of work on a sub-standard gun.
The Brown and Wilson are even in my estimation.
This is another one that should be weighted more heavily, but again I do not know if it affect function and it does not appear to have done so to date.
Slide Rear
Brown 3
Wilson 3
Yost 1
Totals
Brown 21
Wilson 18
Yost 18
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...eRearBrown.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...RearWilson.jpg
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q...deRearYost.jpg