Sorry to say so but yes. After having 5 replacement Glocks in the past 2.5 years (2 GEN3 G19's, 4 GEN4 G19's) I decided to give up on Glock trying to fix them. And yes I tried every parts change mentioned in every post on how some folks got their Glocks to work. Two of the guns did not work right out of the box. The others worked from a few hundred up to 2000 rounds. So I decided to give Randy a chance to work his magic.
Let me say that Randy and Apex were great to work with. I spoke with Randy personally while he worked on my gun. I tried the APEX FRE set up and non-LCI spring loaded bearing. No go. Randy fit one to the gun for me. It worked for awhile. Still not good, sent it back. Tried another hand fitted APEX extractor. No go. Had the ejection port lowered as a last resort. Still being hit by brass. Noticed brass marks on the followers ridge down the center of the gun.
Gun returned to Randy. He stoned the follower ridge to get it to fit and replaced the dual recoil set up with the GEN3 adapter and steel guide rod. I now have 600+ rounds of 12 different kinds of ammo through it. I have not been hit in the head or face by any of these rounds. But I have had two brush up against my right shoulder and one hit my right elbow. The rounds are ejecting much harder now.
In a mag most of the rounds will eject between 3:00-4:00. With a few going between 5:00 or a little further. Randy also worked on the barrel and feed ramp of this gun. Steve at APEX told me this was the most difficult gun they had ever worked on. Again I have only good things to say about Randy and APEX. They only charged me for the parts they replaced. I was only charged for the original extractor none of the replacements. Randy spent many man hours and much ammo working on this gun. They paid for shipping. The gun was just an F'n wreck.
I had the most problems with Monarch Brass from Academy Sports. It was weak as hell. In fact my range owner hit a clay pigeon dead center with it and all it did was put a neat 9mm hole in it. I've never had 9mm not make toast out of clay pigeon. Strangely with the Monarch Steel the gun ejects perfectly to 3:00 every time.
It's as fixed as it's going to get. Before I completely trust it It's going to go through a lot more rounds. I've just been through too much with G19's made over the past couple of years. And I've seen way too many guns beaning people in the head at my range. It is not a small problem. Lots of burned and cut heads. I agree with Grant. I teach shooting classes and am a high volume shooter. Lots of new people have bought guns since the scare of the past year. Most never get past a couple of hundred rounds.
Hell some of them don't even know their guns should not be hitting them in the head! I have a half dozen older Glocks. One twenty and the another 17 years old that have never given me any grief. Got half dozen screwed up ones in a little over two years. So yes their are some that are so out of spec the APEX FRE alone will not fix them. Randy never claimed it would fix all the guns. But he bent over backwards to help me get mine working. I think most are fixed with the Apex FRE and the 30274 extractor. But some (a small number I would guess) are so out of spec they basically have to be rebuilt as custom guns to work.