Back at the beginning of the year, I expressed some misgivings about Tennessee’s new 1911 manufacturer, C.O. Arms, and specifically about their questionable advertising practices. I kept an eye on them, but have not heard much of late… that is, until I read this post of a forum I haunt:
All I can say is, watch out. It may not do what you ask it to do. My local gun shop had some and had to send them back due to none performance reasons, such as not feeding and not even ejecting properly. He felt like they had not been test fired at all. He says he will not carry them any longer. It would be nice to have a mfg in TN, but we need a good one. Not someone putting out junk guns.
Oh, they look good, but performance is where it counts, unless you just want something to lay around and look at. You buy it, you will be sorry
The good news is that we do have a good, non-junk 1911 fabricator here in Tennessee – Hero Gear, and if their Hero 1911 prices are too steep for you (and at around $1900, I cannot blame you), they can hook you up with pretty much any other 1911 you care to buy. Likewise, Coal Creek Armory used to be in the 1911-manufacturing business, and even if they are not any more, they can customize the hell out of anything you bring them.
The bad news… well, the bad news just keeps on coming:
Very poorly fitted.
The slide hangs up on the mag everytime, the grip safety is poorly fitted, the thumb safety hits the grip, thereby chipping it, the trigger is average, and the checkering is very sloppy done. Sharp edges galore too. I really could go on and on.
In fact, one of the two had to go back to CO Arms, as the trigger was about 10 pounds, no lie.
I’m a 1911 collector and thought about picking one up just to report on it, but $1200 is a lot to spend to warn others. I have better fitted 1911s for half that much.
Believe me, its a poor gun. They will not be around long if they don’t get it together.
I was being genuinely honest when I hoped that they would produce a decent product for the price they were charging, and a product that would live up to their “we are AWESOME (even though we have not actually made a single product yet)” hype… but that does not yet seem to be the case. As always, the above two reports could simply be outliers, or particularly biased individuals, so I would certainly welcome any additional feedback from people who have actually laid hands on, and maybe even fired, the C.O. Arms 1911s… and do not work for the company or its publicity firm. For the forseeable future, though, I will certainly be looking elsewhere to scratch my 1911 itch, whenever that time comes.
I’ll get to take a look at one in a couple of weeks when I go the the Highland Rim Friends of the NRA Banquet. Supposedly, they (C.O. Arms) have donated one 1911 to each of the Friends events (20+) in Tennessee.
I’ll vouch for the Hero Gear 1911 as well since I have one as my primary carry weapon. It’s a great product and they stand behind their work (full disclosure: I hang out there just about every Friday afternoon but I’m not a paid employee).
Doesn’t make sense, the 1911 Market is so damn saturated, you need to either be DAMN good (and be willing to make your money in volume) or have a manufacturing process that cuts into the entry level market, like Remington, Para Ord, STI, Taurus, Magnum Research, et al are doing.
There are too many fine (and low-priced mediocre) 1911s out there that I can’t imagine such a charade would work…
@Lynn H. – I would definitely appreciate it if you were to handle the C.O. Arms pistol, and then drop me a note as to what your opinions are – I would be more than willing to put up a guest post or somesuch. I guess that would give me cause to go to one of my FotNRA events, except I am not exactly an ideal person to be reviewing any kind of 1911, given my somewhat limited experience with them
.
I will say, though, that after being able to shoot the Hero 1911 at their TGO shoot last year, their offering is, indeed, a sweet little gun. No rattle to speak of, perfect trigger, and definitely more accurate than I am. The price is more than a little steep, but, in their case, not only did they not publicize it as God’s Gift to the 1911 Community before its production, but it was also shot and reviewed by a lot of disparate people at the event, all of whom seemed impressed… which is more than can be said by C.O. Arms at the moment.
@Weer’d Beard – Honestly, I am not sure what their thought process was. I mean, kudos to them for being a local (at least to Tennesseeans) 1911 fabricator, but the rest of the nonsense? And without a product that can back up that nonsense? I am not seing an upside, and a whole lot of downsides.
[...] And so the saga continues. [...]