By Jon Wayne Taylor
I’ve been looking for a higher end 1911 in .45ACP, and trying to avoid the delay of just having Heirloom build me one. I’ve had some decent 1911s; Wilson CQB, Les Baer, Colt, STI, Ruger, Springfield, etc., and some of those have had quite a bit of quality smithing. Right now, the Colt Combat Elite and the STI Duty One LT 4” are my better shooters, and my daily carry guns. Both of these have had significant work by quality gunsmiths to ensure their accuracy and reliability. I am very comfortable with them, and have yet to have a single failure after many thousands of rounds. So when I got the chance to try out the Cabot Black Diamond, I was interested in how they would shoot against quality factory guns that have had good work done on them . . .
My testing parameters would be pretty simple: seated, shooting from bags at 25 yards for accuracy and precision. Then standing, drawing and walking from 25 yards and 10 yards for just plain ol’ speed and shootability, where a 1911 should really shine. I ran the Cabot against the STI and the Colt with at least one other shooter.
I usually hand load, and both the Colt and the STI have their pet rounds. The STI will feed anything, but its accuracy dramatically changes depending on the round. So I decided to test accuracy between all three guns using a quality store-bought round. I chose the CORBON Performance Match 230gr FMJ. First because it’s a common, quality round, and second because I’ve got about 10,000 of them and I need the once-fired brass.
I also brought along some Remington Golden Saber HP and some hand loads topped with Hornady’s 230gr XTP bullet to make sure the Cabot could feed a couple of different hollow points. I used Wilson Combat ETM magazine in all guns. On day one, I fired alongside a very accomplished handgun hunter and shooter. The next day I got another friend who is an avid 3-gunner to try the Cabot out on its own.
First, the out-of-the-box impression is that photos do not do this gun justice. Whatever they said about their finish process, it’s better looking than you think. Just gorgeous. It’s hard to describe a shiny piece of flat metal as pretty, but there is something about how “flat” it is. As my friend Mark LaRue says, “There’s no measure for parallel. There is parallel, and there is not parallel.”
Against this kind of flat on the slide, no other slide is flat. So, set the gun down and look at it and it pretty much stares back and you and says…“perfect.” Right then I decided that if this gun shot as good as — not better than, but as least as well as — my Colt, I was buying it. That’s how pretty the Black Diamond is.
Picking it up and running through dry fire drills was nice. I love a flattened and milled top slide, because it just makes the sights pop so well. The gun actually feels fairly thin in the hand, and the controls are smooth and well laid out. I don’t know what weight the trigger broke at. I don’t own a trigger scale, but I do own a trigger finger, and it broke very cleanly, without enough resistance to noticeably pull the sights out of alignment for me. The pull was deliberate, but crisp. Very, very good. I was stoked, handling what I was sure would be my new, very flat, very shiny pistol.
After a quick inspection and lube, I walked out to the range to squeeze a few off. First was a simple function test. I try to get the hard one out of the way, right away. Ten-yard fast fire on steel, then 25-yard fast fire on paper. All with factory loaded hollow points. All standing. This is where 1911s fail if they are going to fail. The Cabot functioned for both my friend and me flawlessly. Even better, the gun was sighted for point of aim at 25 yards. Right where it should be. Damnit.
The gun tracked well, the sights returning to the target quickly and smoothly. Recoil was mild while the gun itself felt solid, but in no way heavy. It fired both the Remington Golden Saber and my hand-loaded XTPs just fine. No malfunctions at all.
Accuracy was OK. It’s pretty hard to quantify how accurate a gun is in fast fire, as there are so many variables in the shooter, especially without a defined shot pace, but the gun didn’t wow me or the other shooter. It shot well, but it did not shoot incredibly well. We put probably 50 rounds through the gun this way.
Two 5-round groups, factory ammo, standing, as fast as I could get the sights on target (less than three seconds to expend five rounds), 25 yard distance. This is a good representation of the groups the Cabot gave at this stage.
In comparison, this is my STI immediately after the Cabot. Same drill, well under three seconds. This is a horrible group for me, and the STI doesn’t shoot this round particularly well at all. Really, I hate showing anyone this group. But it’s a fair comparison on that day. The STI is a 4” aluminum framed gun, much lighter, with fatter Heine night sights. Jesus, that’s a horrible group.
To the bench!
I’ve used a Ransom Rest before, and they are great, but there is absolute witchcraft in setting them up, and ain’t nobody got time for that. So this is my simple, standard set-up. It gives me a very stable firing platform. And no, that is not one day’s worth of brass. It’s two days worth of brass.
I loaded up the CORBON RN FMJs into a Wilson Combat ETM mag and slid the first magazine into the Cabot. I hit the slide release, and this happened:
The very first word out of my mouth was, “bullshit.”. I assumed I had not fully seated the magazine. I dropped the magazine and tried it again. Same thing. First round failure to feed. I assumed then, (what stage of grief is denial?) that it was a magazine issue. So I tried several magazines, including Cabot’s.
It wasn’t a magazine issue.
Upon further inspection, the round itself — not the case — was being marred on each side, just past the nose of the bullet. This was a consistent, ongoing issue. There was no second round failure to feed, only the first round. The CEO of Cabot Guns and one of their engineers called me. We walked through what some of the issues might be, but all agreed it wasn’t an issue with the round or the magazine, and at least for this one time in my life, it wasn’t operator error.
They asked me to send the gun back to them with some of the troublesome ammo. I was happy to oblige. They were both extremely polite and professional. No malfunctions of any kind occurred with the STI or the Colt.
With lots of tries, eventually we could get the slide to go forward on the first round. Sometimes I would load a HP for the first round, then the RN FMJs after that. If that was the case, I didn’t shoot the first round into the target, but did subsequent rounds.
So we took turns shooting groups. All in all, we shot about 200 RN FMJ rounds out of the Cabot, and about 100 rounds out of the STI and the Colt put together.
The average 25 yard, 3-round group size, and a pretty consistent group size, for all three shooters over two days, was 2” on the Cabot. Oddly enough, the Cabot and the STI shot about the same as far as groupings. The best group on the Cabot was 1 ¾ inch. The STI really does not like this round, as far as accuracy goes.
The Colt’s average group was closer to 1”, which is pretty indicative of how this guns shoots. I wanted to go out to 50 yards and do a few other point-and-click drills with the Cabot. But at this point, the failure to feed issue was pretty annoying, and my mind was made up.
So, this isn’t my next 1911. And really, that disappoints me. It’s a gorgeous pistol. But at this price level ($5,950), it has to be pretty, run perfectly, and be very accurate. This particular gun’s consistent first round failure-to-feed issues just put it out of consideration for me. Even barring that, the accuracy on this gun just isn’t where it needs to be.
The folks at Cabot have asked me send the gun back to them, and give it another try when I get it back. I’ll be happy to do just that. When I get it back, assuming it chambers, I’ll put a few hundred more rounds through it, and maybe do some load development for it. And who knows, maybe it will be my next carry gun after all.
—-
The following email was sent by Cabot President Rob Bianchin after receiving the Black Diamond that Jon tested:
Our Black Diamond was shipped back to you earlier today so that you may complete your review. This is our first direct experience with Corbon 230 FMJ Performance Match Ammo. The Black Diamond was previously tested using ASYM Precision, Federal, Armscor, Magtech, TUL, Hornady and Wolf and fed without issue.
Using the Corbon that was returned with the pistol our team was able to replicate the feed issues you experience by manually cycling it, feeding a round into the chamber and back out. The Corbon was inspected by our engineers who noted the ball was seated towards the low end of tolerance of SAMI specifications which creates a more predominate edge at the transition of the casing and bullet. It also had virtually no roll in or crimp at the leading edge which accentuates this predominant edge.
Inspection of the gun did not note anything out of the ordinary except that the extractor seemed to be engaging the casing slightly heavy.
Work done: The gun was disassembled and inspected. The pertinent surfaces were inspected with respect to the specifications and cleaned and re-polished. The extractor tension was re-tuned. This work resolved the feed issues of the Corbon ammo.
General assessment: The predominant edge on the bullet casing, which creates additional drag as the bullet is fed, and the slightly heavy extractor tension, which adds drag on the bullet casing, combined to create this feed issue. Either one of these items was not significant enough to cause a mis-feed as evidenced by the use of other ammo that fed fine. Further, once the extractor was tuned the feed issue ceased even with the Corbon ammo.
In general, we will not recommend the use of Corbon to be used with a Cabot 1911 in the future based on these observations.
The flush bottom 8 round magazine has a high spring pressure when loaded with 8 rounds. I recommend loading the flush bottom 8 round mags with the slide open or using 7 rounds.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Bianchin, President
The Black Diamond has been shipped back. Once Jon receives it and runs it again, we’ll update this review and assign star ratings. Read part two here.
We know that 1911s can be fussy about ammo. Some will eat anything. Some cannot handle hollowpoints but feed ball ammo all day long. You never know until you try. Which is why nobody should carry a 1911, or any gun, with ammo that hasn’t been tested at the range.
Indeed.
This is why I advicse people NEVER to buy a 1911 with the intention of carrying it. The one you buy may not reliably work with carry ammo, and it may not be reparable.
If you buy one anyway and it turns out to be rock solid reliable with your carry ammo, then go for it. Just don’t expect such a thing in advance.
See libtard below
Precisely. I love my Kimber TLE II 1911, and it’ll eat up round ammo all day long, but the second you drop Hydro-Shok or ANY hollow-point ammo, I can’t even get through a magazine without a jam.
Great for the range and overall target shooting fun, but I wouldn’t trust a 1911 for concealed carry. And to me, I don’t care what it is, no freaking gun is worth $6,000 of my hard earned money. 6K would buy a pretty nice collection of much more sensible firearms, or 2 new Les Paul’s with enough left over for a new SIG Sauer.
Try switching to Fed HST, maybe $1-$2 more per box of 20 but it has a profile much closer to 230gr FMJ round nose. Goes through my Springfield Loaded brilliantly. The shorter flatter profiled bullets like Gold Dot, XTP, and Hydrashok hang up on the feed ramp when cycling the first round from a fully loaded mag. Does it with my CMC 8 and 10 rounders as well as the factory 7 rounders from Springfield. The problem only manifests while racking the slide and only if the magazine is full. Insert a mag on an open slide or download by one round and everything is happy. FMJ round nose and the HST’s feed like clockwork from all three types of magazines I have so I just stick with that, its cheaper than Gold Dots and barely more expensive than Hydrashoks and XTP’s.
I have had the same problem for years with 1911 and hollow points. Putting the factory ammo through a crimp station helps to a fair degree, depending on the ammo. A couple years ago I found that using Wilson Ammo (hollow point or FMJ) with my 5″ Sig or Wilson (correct Wilson ammo for the given gun, such as 4″, 5″, etc) worked every time– and I mean every time (thousands without a jam on both Wilson Combats, and several hundred that I have fired on my Sig. However, that ammo is not cheap.
Last year I purchased a Cabot (Jones Deluxe), which I saw in person at a shop and was absolutely blown away. As some have said, pictures do NOT in any way do them the justice they deserve. Anyway, with the exception of a few somewhat obscure ammo types, I have used all of the major brands and loads that I have always used with my Glocks without any malfunctions. I figure that if I just shoot another few thousand rounds with my Cabot it will pay for the difference in price.
All kidding aside, while I can appreciate some of the beautiful exotic automobiles in the world, I cannot afford most of them. However, I can afford the Cabot; and as an aside, I have been offered quite a bit more than I paid for the Cabot on multiple occasions when people saw it, which has never happened with any other gun I have owned. So, for me, there is something quite special about some guns like the Cabot, which makes it difficult to compare to most others out there.
I absolutely agree. I have a STI Spartan that’ll eat absolutely anything I throw at it and ask for more. That said, I’m a bit weary to buy another 1911 for carrying purposes. If I were I’d probably carry a revolver while I evaluate the reliability. Revolvers don’t give a damn what ammo you feed ’em.
The stars in the trigger are like gazing upon Maggie Grace, if she had a Ke$ha lyric tattooed to her neck….
Kind of anti-climactic/ a little disappointing, still a beautiful work of art though.
“Kind of anti-climactic/ a little disappointing”- If I had a nickel….
Are we not doing “phrasing” anymore??
Does not surprise me that a precision crafted 1911 would have problems. The design, like the AK, calls for less precision. That is why the pistol worked in the trenches, the Pacific jungle and frozen tundra. Actually the lower end models probably have the same robust reliability that the original military procured pistols had. Precision 1911s are for competition bullseye shooters and not for IDPA or self defense. I know people carry them and then complain about lack of reliability but an inexpensive RIA GI model or a Springfield MILSPEC are both very reliable.
I’m inclined to agree. You can tighten up your tolerances as much as you want, but the ammo manufacturers have their own tolerances which may or may not play nice. It’s just an issue of what you want more – absolute reliability or tight tolerances. You can’t have both, regardless of price. If you want something ultra-reliable, you need a duty weapon, if you want a piece of functional art, you want a Cabot.
+1. Luxury goods tend to be fussy about how you use them and how you treat them. Clothing, cars, boats, guns…the cost of entry is higher, the cost to use and maintain is higher, and the appropriate circumstances for their use and enjoyment is a much tighter set. But the experience of using them properly is where they command the price tag.
Drive a Passat*, carry Glock*. Save the Audi R8** and Cabot 1911** for weekends and social events.
*subject to taste
**Subject to taste and vanity
I’ve made a decent stack buying Passats and Touaregs and swapping out VR6s/2.0Ts that met an untimely demise.
Just saying a better touchstone might be a W123 Benz or a Toyota Hilux with a 22R powerplant.
I agree, my 1911 is an Auto Ordnance and a little loose on tolerances. I had a gunsmith enlarge the ejection port and install better sights right after I got it around 1990, but I didn’t get it to be a tack driver, I got it for self defense and this gun eats every kind of ammo I have ever fed it.
I’ll take my utterly reliable $400 RIA over this $6k polished peacock anyday.
IMHO, for $6000 that thing should shoot whatever you put in it. It’s a beautiful gun, but for that price you shouldn’t have to make any excuses for it.
Yes…it’s always “the ammo’s fault”, never the gun. For $6k for a handgun, which is accurate to 50 yards on a good day, and picky about ammo, is just silly.
Wow, six grand. It sure is pretty, though.
$6000 1911, but fails to feed the first round?
They have a word for that. Let me think…oh , yes, its JUNK.
Before someone thinks im being obtuse, observe that if a product costs six times as much as the competition, it should work six times as well. If Cabot did not intend on their product being used on the range, they should market it as an artistic replica and have done with it.
For that kind of money, it should buy a product devoid of excuses.
Its called the law of diminishing returns.
And common sense ain’t so common.
The law of diminishing returns (as applied here) would imply that an item six times as much in price won’t do six times as much better. But it should do somewhat better, maybe two times better. Maybe 50 percent better. It ought to at least work better by a factor that’s greater than 1.0. This one doesn’t even reach 1.0. It’s WORSE than the cheaper product. The return didn’t diminish, it went negative.
So whatever is going on here, it ain’t “law of diminishing returns.”
If a $1K 1911 doesn’t chamber 100%, then a $6K that acts the same is “diminishing returns,” especially inside your wallet.
Looks like a bit of a semantic argument here. We’re looking at the same phenomenon (a 6K gun being no better, and probably a bit worse) than a 1K gun and coming up with two different names for it.
I usually see “diminishing returns” used to apply to cases where spending more money results in an improvement, but not a proportional improvement. Say, you spend twice as much and get something 50 percent better, or you spend six times as much and get something only twice as good. You’ve spent a thousand bucks on 50 percent then another four thousand bucks to get another 50 percent.
If it’s only as good, then there’s no improvement for the money (not just “not much” improvement). Not sure what name I’d give to that other than “waste of money,” because you’re getting nothing for your money, not even a small improvement.
But this gun doesn’t even meet that–it’s WORSE than the 1000 dollar example, so I said it can’t be diminishing returns–because it’s something worse than “diminishing returns.”
Clearly your notion of diminishing returns encompasses cases where the marginal return is negative, not just getting smaller and smaller. Hence our difference of opinion.
Sorry if it wasn’t clear where I was coming from. In any case I don’t think either one of us will be in the market for one of these. 🙂
Junk? It should work 6 times better than a $1k gun? Why? I’m guessing a brand new Kia or Honda that you can get for $20k will hit 130-140 mph. Does that mean that a car worth $120k should drive 6 times as fast? Nope. Labor and materials cost money. There’s also the exclusivity factor which appeals to more affluent buyers. I’m personally not interested in a Cabot, but I think Wilsons, Nighthawks or Ed Browns are reasonably priced and if I had the money I’d get one. Somebody might find those guns overpriced and would not pay a cent over $500 for a 1911. So what? Start making high end 1911s, charge $6k and see if there’s a market. Apparently there is and that’s great. And as for the reliability? A high end 1911 is not a Glock, it might not work with every single brand of ammo coming out of multiple factories. My Glock will stove-pipe if limp-wristed, I’ve seen it happen. Doesn’t mean that it’s junk, many polymer guns do that. It’s all relative.
I forgot to mention that my CZ 75 compact will not feed flat point 9mm bullets reliably. No worries, I just won’t buy that type of ammo.
Never even tried flat points in mine.
I never see them around here anyway, so I probably won’t bother.
The problem isn’t that it doesn’t work 6 x better than a $1000 gun. I wouldn’t expect it to. The problem is, it apparently actually works WORSE than the $1000 gun.
Good to know you can shoot Wolf out of your $6,000 gun though. Maybe after 200 years of feeding it nothing but you’d break even with the guy who shoots Cor-Bon through his Para.
For the record, my Para expert purchased for $414 ($314 after the rebate) shoots everything I’ve tried so far and I won’t cry if it gets scratched up.
“This is our first direct experience with Corbon 230 FMJ Performance Match Ammo.”
Forgive my response, but at the price point, they have the money to test their guns on every ammunition known to man. And at that price point, I’d expect that they would have tested it on every possible ammunition made in that caliber because of the price point. Again, at that price point, the gun should be perfect and run flawlessly on all ammo in all conditions. It should even be required to pass the “Glock test” (i.e. fill the entire thing with sand and mud, freeze it, etc). I can go out with my $400ish Glock 19 Gen 4 (blue label discount) and fill mine with sand and it still fire.
I’m encouraged that they replied promptly and thoroughly. I don’t hate on them for it, just that it would disappoint me, too. But it’s encouraging that they care: I’m going to assume that they’re going to promptly fix it and send it back.
So I can forgive a company for not testing with every brand of .45 ACP known to man. But here’s what caught me: “In general, we will not recommend the use of Corbon to be used with a Cabot 1911 in the future based on these observations.”
Are you kidding me? You charge six large for a 1911 and you’re not just going to add this Corbon stuff to your test cycle, knowing that one of your guns has choked on it? That’s just poor.
If you charge $6G for a 1911, it had better be better than a Wilson or a Les Baer in some really meaningful way. If the answer to that is, “it’s prettier,” well, words fail.
Already done. JT’s testing it this weekend.
RF
I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Hugely expensive 1911s = unreliable crap.
$6000? Uh huh. Carried a GI issue 45 in the Republic of South Vietnam. It had probably been carried by 20 guys before me. It was beat up and worn and the action was to be kind loose. It got rained on, dropped in more than one rice paddy and was generally abused. It never failed to shoot and pulled my fat out of the fire on more than one or two occasions. If given a choice between some pretty $6000 gun with tight tolerances and that beat up old 45 I will take the grunt gun every time.
Honestly, this sort of thing is what turns me off of 1911s for carry. Sure, my Springfield has never failed to fire anything I’ve put down it, but I’ve owned at least another six 1911s (Nighthawk (sent back 3 times and didn’t resolve the problems), Colt (built by C&S, no less), Kimber, Para, another Springfield or two) have all had feedway stoppages, FTE, feedway stoppage, and so on.
And, now, after seeing a $6000 gun do the same thing? Sheesh.
I enjoy shooting them and looking at them, but I just can’t carry them — if I have that many guns, from that many manufacturers and they all have similar malfunctions, I don’t feel like I can ever really trust the design for carry. As much as I’m sure we all love the 1911, self-defense isn’t, and shouldn’t be, about style.
Looking at some of these prices, I guess I understand why my Kimbers digest everything without complaint. They are way, far away from being custom 1911s, just pretty common stuff. Gotta cost a bunch more than a Kimber before they are worthless. Think of it; 3,4,and 5 inch guns in each the normal and the round heeled versions, 6 guns in all, before we get to one of these? And these don’t actually work?
Why, oh why on God’s green earth would you use a $6k firearm as a daily carry piece? Does that price include the cost of therapy when you have to drop it into an evidence bag after a DGU?
Bingo. A $600 Glock 21 will go *bang* with nearly all ammo and you won’t cry when it disappears into the evidence room.
There is no 1911 in the world worth $6k except for those that were shat by Mr Browning himself.
Is that a typo? Because I’m pretty sure Browning DID shit out new firearm designs
I was not impressed with the Cabot demo gun at TIFF. Of the 5 rounds, I had issue with 3 of the rounds fully chambering with the ammo they where using. I was at their booth around 10 am on Saturday, so it was not like thousands of round had been fired thru it already and it just needed a cleaning. My Kimber has given me zero issues with ammo or otherwise in the 6 years I have owned it. At 1/6 the price, I will stick with a gun that functions.
Chris, Cabot did not have a demo gun at TIFF. You may be confused with another company.
Rob- my mistake it was Republic Forge I had issues with, last bay on the left at TIFF. Still a gun that cannot consistently chamber quality factory ammo that is within SAMI specifications is a gun that I would want to buy or depend on if I ever needed too.
I’m sure they’d be glad to sell you a box of very pretty .45 ACP for $6000 that would definitely work great in the gun.
They have fantastic tolerances and build quality. Marketing-wise it is intended to be like the the $75,000 engraved shotgun or the 50 year old Scotch that is $500 per bottle. As far as the feeding problem the gun is picky like a Ferrari.
Cabot is great company and people. However personally I’m like a lot of lot of the commenters here – 6 times the cost should equal six times the performance and it really does not. Anybody thinking value is going to be disappointed and no way is this a carry gun. What’s cool is the style, the idea of an “ultra-premium” pistol in the marketing sense, and the appeal to the very rich as a luxury good.
I’ll bet the $75k shotgun works, though. And I know the $500/bottle scotch drinks very, very nicely.
I do not disagree with you. Just depends on your point of view. If you think a pistol is a tool sometimes used for combat – pretty much what I think – then first round failure to feed with one type of ammo is a deal killer. If you think it’s a work of art then it’s not a big deal.
I’ve gotta say i’ve had a sigma banging around for 10 years and i’ve never had a failure to feed.
Not surprised. A Model-T made of solid gold will still get demolished by a smart car in a street race.
I wonder if it would have fed and returned to battery with a “slingshot” or “power rack” which utilizes the spring strength, instead of using the slide stop/release?
Wow…what’s with all the jacked up guns you have been testing? Sign of the times that too many manufacturers aren’t taking care of business?
The 1911 platform can be extremely reliable, accurate, quick handling, and not ammunition sensitive. At what point do you consider a gun reliable? I mean, I have a few 1911s with thousands of rounds through them, mix matched ammo and all, very accurate, with zero malfunctions. Not some malfunctions, zero malfunctions.
You can get reliable, beautiful, concealable, and fast, in a 1911. But not cheap. That’s the big downside of the 1911. You can actually have the best of everything, but you have to pay for it.
I was a striker fired, polymer gun guy for about 15 years. Then, one day I shot a course with a friend’s Ed Brown Custom Kobra. Using the same ammo, I ran the course faster, and more accurately, than the modern gun I had 10,000+ rounds through. And that got my attention. Within 2 years I was carrying a 1911 every day, with good evidence to back up my confidence in it.
I’ve had 1911s fail. I had a Kimber Ultra Carry fail even with quality smithing. But I’ve had just about every platform fail. I’ve owned 1 Glock. It consistently failed to feed with .45ACP LSWC rounds, and I was never very accurate with it. Lots of other people have told me they have the same problem with LSWC rounds in the Glock. The last time someone had a new Springfield XD out at my range, it consistently failed to feed when 2 other 1911s kept on spitting out lead.
The 1911 can be just as reliable and accurate as any other semi automatic gun on the market. But it does cost a lot more. Where it excels, where the gun really outshines many other platforms, is draw, point, shoot shot shoot as fast as you can.
I’ve had 1911s fail. I had a Kimber Ultra Carry fail even with quality smithing. But I’ve had just about every platform fail.
Anything CAN fail. The person who buys a gun and straps it on without checking it out, thinking “of course it will work, it’s new!” is ignorant or a fool. (If you can’t afford to test it immediately, that’s a different matter–you aren’t deceiving yourself, you just have to defer the testing and are figuring that a gun that will likely work is better than no gun at all.) But for a given model, which is the way to bet? Which is more likely to be a failure? Which would you trust, NIB, to save your life if you had to pick it up right now? I maintain that Glocks, CZs, Berettas, Sigs, XDs, S&W M&Ps etc. are far more likely to function properly out of the box with arbitrary chosen (but SAAMI-spec) ammo than 1911s, with the possible exception of some of the cheap sloppy 1911s. I’d pick up a new Glock and expect it to work far more readily than ANY new fancified 1911.
Or to put it another way, buy a 1911, then let it prove it’s reliable (once you’ve done so and possibly given up on two or three to get to a non-lemon, you will have a gun that’s a joy to use). Buy something else and (if you are prudent) verify it’s reliable. The expectation is quite different. Personally I’d rather drop three, verging on four, figures on a gun that I can go into figuring will most likely not be troublesome. I’ve had a couple of “oh crap I spent money on a dog” moments, but only a small fraction of them.
To quote Melanie Griffith in Working Girl…”6thousand? 6thousand dollars?!?” Whatever for that price it should work. And work well…
Just looking at the pictures, the gun appears to have shape edges everywhere.
Sorry, but for my $6K, I expect it to have none. All half-dozen of my Novak Colts don’t have any, and cost a little more than one-third of it.
No thanks. A fancy shiny finish does not make up for it.
Meanwhile, a $400 Rock Island 1911 is functioning properly elsewhere.
My Sig C3 survives on a diet consisting almost entirely of re-manufactured 180gr jhp’s and lead SWC’s without complaint. Only failure I’ve had in over 1k rounds was the first couple mags it absolutely hated Wilson mags. Lock back with 1 round left, couple failure to feeds, but only with Wilsons. CMC and the stock Sig ones ran perfect. Match grade barrel, not a wiggle in the slide, and it cost me under $900.
A 1911 is a gun that you show to your friends. A Glock is a gun that you show to your enemies.
Glock 20 serving as nightstand gun. Tritium sights. Flashlight. And of course loaded with 10mm. Free demos, just stop by at 2AM, no appointment necessary.
(And I normally carry CZ-75s or sometimes a RAMI.)
Reading this review hurt. As a gamer and avid pistol shooter I sort of see the ultra luxury good as the concept of the “best equipment money can buy” and finding out that on more than one front we can discount that notion with the “Black Diamond” is disheartening.
You purchase a gun like this to be flawless. Then, to be heirloom worthy. Then to tell stories about it. The reviewer, to his credit, was civil in saying it like it was. If I had a gun that didn’t run with match grade ammo that I had 10k of at that price point then I would probably add enough blue to the general pool of global carbon dioxide to change the color palette of a sunset across the world for at least a week.
Guess I will put another gun in that fictional “attractive and reliable to a point of utter sadness and with a price to match” point that I will silently be working towards.
I will never understand why anyone would carry a 1911 for self defense. Buy a Glock and be done with it.
I own an old Colt purchased many years ago that is my favorite pistol to shoot, ogle and clean. It stays in the safe unless it’s range day.
“I will never understand why anyone would carry a 1911 for self defense. Buy a Glock and be done with it.”
Because they want to. It’s called freedom of choice.
I recently bought some impressive looking 165 grain copper hollow-points for my GI Remington-Rand 1911A and was not happy when they insisted on digging their noses into the bottom of the chamber mouth instead of sliding home. Did a bunch of eye-balling and found that the tongue on the follower in the magazine was bent down slightly. Then I realized all of my magazines were at least fifty years old. They fed hard ball reliably but the ring mouth on the HP ammo caught the lip on the barrel. A bit of plier action on the magazines’ follower tongues solved the problem by cocking the HP noses up a tad.
BTW my favorite gun is still the M61 20mm Gatling. Sighted-in a few mounted in airplanes and they all shot inside 3 MOA during 50-round bursts, a mere one-half second of fire. 3800 pounds of recoil force, too.a
Both my SIG 1911 and my wife’s Colt will shoot just as well as this pistol, and both have been perfectly reliable, with the exception of some out-of-spec reloads.
The 1911 can’t be discounted as a carry gun, as the user must train with it and verify its function. As with absolutely any other weapon.
And Glocks are 100% reliable, no matter what? When I hear that said, I know I’ve just heard from someone who needs to bag a lot more trigger time.
This is a great review, I think your writing style is awesome. I own 1911’s from Sig, Les Baer, and Wilson. I have been contemplating a Cabot and therefore found this review true and helpful. Thank you!
Great looking 1911. However, for a lot less $$$$$, the new Colt Competition ($850) is my choice. In black, the Colt looks good, is very accurate with most target ammo, doesn’t jam and doesn’t hurt the pocket. Comes from the factory with a 3.5 -4 lb trigger.
Does a Chevy run all the time? Probably – until it breaks. Can one compare a Chevy to a Ferrari? Insomuch as they are both automobiles yes, but no one will even think about putting them on the same level.
If you want to own a Ferrari, you go to a school to learn how to drive it, you put a particular type of fuel in it, and you take it to the shop for tuneups much more often than that Chevy. It costs exponentially more than the Chevy, is a beautiful car and, yes, it’s finicky.
But drive a Ferrari and then tell me the Chevy is better.
Cabot is not Chevy and isn’t designed to be. It’s designed to be the Ferrari (actually, more like Rolls-Royce). People who can afford a Roller know what’s up and can afford to pay the mechanic earning 6-figures to tweak it when necessary.
For daily carry, I’ll stick with my Springfield XD Mod 2 with the cheesy “Grip Zone” graphics. It shoots every time with whatever I feed it. But if I can ever get an extra $4 – $8K that isn’t earmarked for anything else, I want one of these Cabot 1911 pistols.
Because I, for one, can’t afford a Ferrari 😉
Agreed, Mr. Untactical, and well said. Firearms are both essential tools and also can be beautiful machines. If you don’t particularly appreciate a firearm for it’s native beauty but only for it’s utility, great, and enjoy your choices for pistols. But for most of us there are both motivations. However, there is more. I often hear folks say something like “Why do you need a gun?”, to which I sometimes skip the Constitutional responses and take a more obtuse tack by asking if there is any object that they love that is exceptional and perhaps somewhat expensive: a painting, great stereo equipment, a Porsche, a swimming pool, great hiking boots; the list is endless. My next question then is why not just buy the cheap version or skip the expense? The real answer for all of us should be, we want this because we can have it. Because we live in a free country. That freedom allows us to experience life in many ways, even if some others see no value there. If you don’t like a gun, don’t own one. If all you want is utility, there are plenty. But, for me and for lots of others, thank goodness there are companies like Cabot that create items like this. There are lots of folks like me, who aspire to own something like this and isn’t it wonderful that some can. And, along the way, perhaps we learn something from Cabot or others about making those objects, something utilitarian.
My 2 cents after 5 decades of using various 1911’s:
tight tolerances do not ‘necessarily’ create feed or function problems. But feedramp and chamber dimensions, tolerances and finish certainly may. So may cheap or damaged/dropped magazines. Cabot apparently admitted they had to ‘work on’ the feed ramp to solve that gun’s issue – probably subtly reshaping and polishing. By contrast, at a third the price of the Cabot, every Les Baer 1911 I own [half a dozen at last count in different calibers and sizes] has arrived ‘tight as hell’, high effort to even rack the slide when new, lubed or not, but none of them has ever had a failure to feed or failure to go into battery, with any of the ammo I have put through them, including the very same CorBon varieties as in the article, plus hollow points of all shapes, sizes, weights and brands, from ultralight to heavy bullets. One of mine even fed, fired and extracted a .40 round mistakenly loaded in the middle of the magazine. Made an unusual blast noise I admit. Les Baer was once quoted as saying his guns would hand cycle fired cases – he was correct. Talk about sharp case edges. Go figure. As to magazines, I’ve never had a feed problem with Wilson or McCormick brands. Can’t say the same about el cheapo’s from gun shows.
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