I’ll start off by saying that I’m far from an expert on 1911s. I owned a Series 80 Colt back when I was in college, but that’s about it.
With the burgeoning crop of 9mm 1911s coming in the scene, I figured it was worth revisiting.
I’m fortunate that a friend of mine is a rep for SDS Imports/ Tissas USA, so I was able to give him a call.
To try and keep things as unimpeachable as possible, all I said initially was “Hey, can I borrow your range-day demo gun to check out?”.
I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t getting a cherry picked review sample, and one that had some miles on it.
When I picked the pistol up, I was told that it had roughly 300 rounds on it so far, and had not been cleaned.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS:
For a $619.99 MSRP, I wasn’t expecting anything super refined. The overall appearance was clean & consistent. No apparent defects or imperfections that I saw.
The Stingray is an aluminum-framed, commander-sized 1911, with the Ed Brown Bobtail to aid in concealment.
It uses the Series 70 type design, which purportedly results in a cleaner trigger pull than the 80 Series firing pin block.
The grip safety seemed nicely tuned, requiring very little pressure to activate.
While the slide uses Novak cuts for the sights, I was told that they are intentionally undersized, so some fitting will be required if you choose to upgrade from the factory 3-dot sights.
The slide ran smoothly, with no perceived grit or binding.
The trigger had a bit of take-up before the wall, and a little creep before the sear engaged.
Because I’m not a particularly sophisticated pistolero, and I currently lack a trigger gauge, I’ll refrain from going into too much detail on the trigger, and I categorically refuse to use the trope of it “breaking like a glass rod”.
Suffice to say it felt fine, and about what I expected for a $600 carry gun.
The G10 grips felt a little fat for the rest of the gun, but I’m not sure if I’d want anything slimmer. The sunburst pattern does feel like they copied Wilson Combat’s homework a bit.
There was no front-strap checkering, but that’s easily rectified with some skateboard deck tape.
In my next article, I’ll go over my range session & final assessments.
Disclosures:
I am friends with the Tisas rep, and we shoot together occasionally.
This was not a paid review from SDS/Tisas. With that said, when I met up to return the pistol my buddy did pay for my lunch, so my compensation for this piece was technically a pastrami sandwich & a chocolate egg cream.
