A couple of us took advantage of the Ed Brown trade-in deal and sent off a box of clapped out 1911 mags and some monies and got back a box of new Ed Brown 8 round mags. Today we got to test them out, and while they're good, they're not Wilson good. By that I mean the Wilson fed more ammo through more guns without drama than the EBs. For the $12.50 effective price of the trade-in though, the EBs are worth it (mostly).
Our test mules were: 1918 Colt Government, 1977 Colt Combat Commander and a 2000 Kimber Custom (mildly worked on by Valtro as to not be the POS it was when it shipped from Kimber and on it's second refinish)
Mags were: Ed Brown 8 round stainless (all new) and Wilson 8 round stainless (2005 vintage, well used in classes)
Ammo: 230gr ball PPU commercial, 230gr random gun show reloads from 2006, 200gr SWCs (reloads), 185gr golden saber (reloads) from 2015, 185gr hornady (reloads) from 2017
The EBs appeared to be formed out of a single piece of tubing, the Wilsons had a weld down the back. The EB base plates stuck out more and were super easy to grab on to should you need to rip them free, and met up nicely with the front strap on all 3 pistols. The EB followers were metal, the Wilsons are plastic and the Wilsons were less 'anti-tilt' in that you could get them to pop out a bit if you poked at them.
Function wise, when running 230gr ball factory or handloads or 200gr SWCs there were no problems in any of the pistols. When it came the two types of 185gr JHPs, we found that the EB mags would cause the rounds to get caught up and nose into the ramp too hard on the Commander resulting it it failing to feed. We tried a few of them and the results were the same.
Hard to show in photos and with words, but when loaded to capacity if you pushed on the rim of the cartridge like the slide would when feeding the round would dive down. On the Wilson it would just pop up and out of the mag and feed correctly. On th EBs it would get caught on the edge of the mag and then when forced forward it wouldn't pop up and in on the Commander.
You would end up with this:
The only other mag brand we had on hand was the 1918's original OEM mag so we tried that. It also would cause the same feed problem. Move that ammo over to any of the Wilsons and it would feed correctly.
So if your goal is to feed the most ammo types through the most guns, Wilson was the winner here as they fed all the ammo types tested through all the guns without problem. If you plan to have to strip mags out with lots of double feeds, the EBs are the winner.
Unrelated, I just realized that my 'new' Kimber is 22 years old at this point. Wow, we're getting old.
Our test mules were: 1918 Colt Government, 1977 Colt Combat Commander and a 2000 Kimber Custom (mildly worked on by Valtro as to not be the POS it was when it shipped from Kimber and on it's second refinish)
Mags were: Ed Brown 8 round stainless (all new) and Wilson 8 round stainless (2005 vintage, well used in classes)
Ammo: 230gr ball PPU commercial, 230gr random gun show reloads from 2006, 200gr SWCs (reloads), 185gr golden saber (reloads) from 2015, 185gr hornady (reloads) from 2017
The EBs appeared to be formed out of a single piece of tubing, the Wilsons had a weld down the back. The EB base plates stuck out more and were super easy to grab on to should you need to rip them free, and met up nicely with the front strap on all 3 pistols. The EB followers were metal, the Wilsons are plastic and the Wilsons were less 'anti-tilt' in that you could get them to pop out a bit if you poked at them.
Function wise, when running 230gr ball factory or handloads or 200gr SWCs there were no problems in any of the pistols. When it came the two types of 185gr JHPs, we found that the EB mags would cause the rounds to get caught up and nose into the ramp too hard on the Commander resulting it it failing to feed. We tried a few of them and the results were the same.
Hard to show in photos and with words, but when loaded to capacity if you pushed on the rim of the cartridge like the slide would when feeding the round would dive down. On the Wilson it would just pop up and out of the mag and feed correctly. On th EBs it would get caught on the edge of the mag and then when forced forward it wouldn't pop up and in on the Commander.
You would end up with this:
The only other mag brand we had on hand was the 1918's original OEM mag so we tried that. It also would cause the same feed problem. Move that ammo over to any of the Wilsons and it would feed correctly.
So if your goal is to feed the most ammo types through the most guns, Wilson was the winner here as they fed all the ammo types tested through all the guns without problem. If you plan to have to strip mags out with lots of double feeds, the EBs are the winner.
Unrelated, I just realized that my 'new' Kimber is 22 years old at this point. Wow, we're getting old.
