1911 Choice

[IPSICK]

DW, LB, or Springfield if you are willing to get it customized. TRPs are pretty awesome but I would still want to get rid of the MIM parts in it.

I didn't know you could get Nighthawk for sub-$2k and I didn't realize some of the Wilson's came with MIM.

[SlowArrow]

I pick up a Les Baer Custom Carry on Tuesday. Under $2000 and a heck of a 1911 - talk with Crazy John and see what he has in stock.

[jcaoloveshine]

Buy a basic 1911 from colt or springfield. Take it and $500-1000 to a gunsmith, wait a few months. Then get back a custom gun that is the way YOU WANT IT, and it will most likey be better and cheaper.
You wont be paying extra money just for some fancy name like wilson.

Low end wilson guns, last time i looked, were full of mim parts. High end did not.

FUD. Wilson does not use MIM parts in any of their guns per their sales rep in the thread below, but their value line of parts are MIM. Wilson Bulletproof parts are not MIM.

http://forum.m1911.org/showthread.php?t=74757

If you were to go the gunsmith route, don't send it to just any gunsmith. Find a 1911 gunsmith. When all said and done, a basic 1911 with another 500-1000 dollars tacked on top of it probably still won't be semicustom quality, nor could you ever sell it for 500-1000 on top of the price of the base gun. Funny thing is, most 1911 smiths would end up swapping out the guts of the gun with Wilson/Ed Brown parts and a Kart/Schuemann/BarSto barrel, so you're basically asking a local smith to rebuild and refit your factory gun. Makes more sense to me just to get it straight from the shop, unless you were doing a special build on a Colt Series 70 or had some sentimental attachment to the base gun.

True, semicustoms are expensive, but there is a lot of hand fitting that goes into it. Semicustoms shoot incredibly smooth because the slide/frame has been hand lapped and parts are fitted precisely. There's definitely a difference in felt recoil between shooting a Kimber/Springfield versus an Ed Brown/Wilson/NH/Baer. Just rack the slide on a hand-fit 1911 versus production 1911, and now imagine that action amplified during recoil and you get the idea.

Les Baer is a great choice. It's a great no-frills 1911, I love my Baer TRS and it's well worn look. If you want a nicer finish, Ed Brown is a great step up. Wilson and Nighthawk are the priciest, and have much more of a "tactical" feel.

[IPSICK]

What's a "low end" Wilson gun?

Buy a Wilson. All parts are already top quality. Instead of paying a 'smith to make an imperfect gun near perfect, the Wilson will already be near perfect. Plus, after 5 years you could sell your Wilson for more than you paid for it. I could sell my Wilson for almost $1k more than I paid for it just 3 years ago.

Well it will be near perfect according to Wilson's standards. Going full house custom will make it near perfect in a combination of the owner's and gunsmith's standards. Nothing wrong with a Wilson, but some of that premium is just as much the name as the quality of the gun. I would doubt that guns by John Harrison, Stan Chen, CT Brian, etc would lose much value over the years.

Honestly, I would personally prefer buying a good starter 1911 (from as cheap as a Springfield Mil-Spec up to a Dan Wesson) and then learning all of the ins and outs of the platform. After some experience and research you'd get a better idea of exactly what you would want and what you might not. Then send it into a custom smith. If you start out cheap though, you will be much itchier to customize it than if you go for something like the DW. However, if you start with the DW you'd have less to replace.