Advice on an selecting an upper - DD vs LaRue

[Tuthmose]

Hello all,

I’ve been mulling over what upper to use with my shiny new LMT MARS lower (not wanting to use their monolithic offering). Looking for a 16" barrel, with M-Lok handguards over most if not all of that. I thought I’d settled on a Daniel Defense DDM4 v7 . . . until I recently saw the LaRue Ultimate Upper package on their website. LaRue’s package comes with some stuff I don’t want or need . . . but overall is still a bit cheaper than what I can get a DDM4v7 upper for, and LaRue is of course known for being excellent. Now I'm on the fence.

So, I’m back again to solicit opinions from folks with far more experience than I. I'm certainly not looking to spark a favored-brand-fight, but is there any reason – accuracy, reliability, fitment, etc. - that I should go with one over the other? Or does it just come down to aesthetics and price? (BTW, I'm assuming that the LaRue 16" is a mid-length gas tube, though I could not find that data on their site. Please correct me if I'm wrong!). Any information or personal experiences one way or the other would be very helpful.

As usual, I appreciate the advice!

[26 Inf]

I bought one of the Ultimate Upper Kits in 6.5 Grendel. It is only available in an 18 inch barrel. The fact that the longest tube LaRue offers is 13 inches my only complaint.

I went ahead and bought a stripped lower from them for a complete rifle under 1300.00 and I'm well pleased. Well, pleased hell, I love this thing. I am currently saving my coins for a SUURG Ultimate Upper Kit, I haven't made up my mind for sure, but probably in 5.56.

I know you have a lower you are putting the upper onto, but with the ultimate upper you get the MBT trigger, LPK, receiver extension, end plate, castle nut, spring, buffer, and charging handle as well as a stock and pistol grip. So essentially you are buying a complete rifle, minus sights and lower receiver.

I don't know much about Daniel Defense's offerings, but it seems to me the LaRue method of attaching the rail directly to the upper receiver versus the barrel nut, would offer more precision potential then the DD MFR rail, which attaches to the barrel nut on the M4 V7 uppers.

Hope this helps.

[Tuthmose]

Thank you, 26 Inf. You've hit on a lot of the points behind my reasoning. I really like the idea that the rail essentially mimics the strengths of a monolithic by bolting together like that, but with longer rails than I can get in any LMT kit and a less proprietary method of barrel attachment. I'd like 15 inch rails, but 13 will do. The only way to get anything that long via LMT, as far as I can see, is to purchase piece-meal. Their kits only seem to come with short rails, and even those are spendy. I'm looking for longer rails primarily for sight radius and ideal tac-light placement.

That said, the DD upper, without a bolting flange, giving me more options down the road to change handguards if I find I want to. Seems I'm kinda locked in with LaRue. Is that barrel-nut-handguard-mount really less ideal than the LaRue bolt-together, or does it make no practical difference in real life? The DD does have longer rails, albeit only slightly. It also has a pinned gas-block, versus the set-screw LaRue offering. Does that really matter? I don't have the experience to tell, though conventional mechanical wisdom inclines me toward a pinned one. I also don't really like LaRue's flashhider, so that's some more cash if I go the LaRue route. I'm obviously leaning towards LaRue, but these issue still nag at me. Decisions, decisions . . .

[odugrad]

I have no experience with Larue uppers but can attest to Daniel Defense's quality. I have several DD rifles. They are top notch.

Larue seems to be more of a precision focused company (nothing wrong with that) whereas DD is more defensive, jack-of-all-trades minded.

[bp7178]

I've owned both DD and Larue rifles; both are well made. DD is a little more tacky logo NASCARish, which is a slight turn off. Garish and tacky over-branding is a ridiculous trend in the firearms community.

I've shot many rifles with pinned blocks and set screw blocks. Neither have been an issue. All my Noveske rifles used pinned blocks. Larue barrels are dimpled for their gas blocks which use 3 set screws. Use the appropriate thread locking compound and worry not.

I recently swapped out my 5.56 tOBR upper for Larue's Stealth 2.0 MLOK. I really like the simplicity of the MLOK system over the standard PredatOBR handguard/upper combo that used screw on plastic sections and pic rails. It shed a bit of weight as a result, and when running a suppressor any weight reduction on the upper that doesn't come from a barrel profile reduction is nice.

The Larue and DD use a slightly different approach to how the upper is attached to the handguard. Both use a similar style barrel nut which doesn't require indexing. The Larue uses a flange on the upper that the hardguard attaches directly to. IMO this is a better solution than the DD one of using a collar and clamping the handguard to this collar and the barrel nut. There's no contact what-so-ever between the Larue handguard and the barrel or barrel nut. There's nothing to align on reassembly with the Larue. Slide handguard on and tighten the screws. With DD rails I always found myself having to fidget with the alignment to keep the upper rail as one continuous piece with out any obvious steps or alignment problems. I had a factory KAC rifle where it was very obviously not aligned very well so maybe that just bothers me more than it should. At a certain price point I think its reasonable for a consumer to expect excellence in terms of design, fitment and function. DD, Larue and KAC all fit into that space.

I like how both the Larue and DD rifles can be disassembled with common hand tools. One of my knocks against KAC is the proprietary tools required to work on the platform.

The issue I have with the DDM4v7 is their use of a government profile barrel. That government profile makes sense on a M4 if you need to mount a M203. Its thicker at the wrong end for all other uses. The Larue barrel, the Stealth one, uses a much beefier contour, which is more akin to the S2W profile that DD uses. Both are thick and the chamber end and taper down to the muzzle.