mnpfamily

Finally got a Shooters Connection Tournament Series Pro. Wish I'd picked one up sooner as I've been through several range bags. I read the reviews, (yes it is big), but not overly big for my needs. Easily fits all the gear for range practice and matches (for both myself and my wife), but it can get heavy. Solid construction and very well thought out features. When my wife first looked through it as she looked for her ear pro, her first comment was, " wow, I can't believe how organized our bag is!" Excellent bag in my opinion and very versatile.

I've checked numerous times, my BP is actually considerably lower after smoking a cigar than before.

I haven't tried those in particular, but from the picture, they look really similar to the Dawson pads I'm using.

Forgot to add, another benefit, with my gun anyway, is that these Dawson followers didn't need any mods to keep the slide from locking back when empty. With the stock STI followers, the slide was getting hung up after the last round, not locked back, but not fully forward either. I was getting ready to take the edge off the follower when I read this thread. Saved me some work, thanks again, the info is much appreciated.

Yes sir, those are the ones. I believe the SKU # was 033-001, picked mine up from Shooters Connection. I'm using them with the EZ-OFF baseplates (+300) and a Cameron's magwell and they seat with 10 in the mag. Still stiff, (mine are brand new mags), but not impossible to seat like before I switched followers. I haven't tried them live fire yet, but all fed fine when I hand cycled dummy rounds through them.

Thanks again for the advice, got the Dawson followers in the mail yesterday, tried them in my mags this morning and they worked for me.

Thanks again for the assistance, I'll try the Dawson followers first as I already have a couple of the EZ off pads for my 38 mags.

Just trying to clarify before I order as I've run into the same issue with my new Limited gun. The Para basepads you mentioned originally are the +2 Awesome pads by Dawson. These will work the stock 10 round springs and STI followers when the pads are filled with epoxy? Or the EZ off pads that add length but not capacity will work with Dawson followers? Thanks in advance for the assistance. It's weird how the 10 round .38S mags for my Open gun don't seem to be quite so hard to seat.

I've used predatortactical.com, the other I believe can be found in the Training section area. Both are really good.

+1 on the above. It almost looks like the bottom most portion of the red tip is missing. Mine has a groove/slit and then a smaller part below it. Hard to tell for sure from the pics though.

Where I live, humidity is a problem so I do empty the powder after every session. Fastest way I found is to remove the fail-safe rod, pull the 2 pins on the top of the press, slide the whole tool head out and then dump the powder back into the jug. Pretty much painless. Picking 100 spilled primers off the garage floor is a pain, as I've also done that, but I think I found something worse. When you remove the shellplate to clean or change calibers, make sure that little ball-bearing thing doesn't roll into the hole in the middle of the press. Took me 30 mins or so to get that ball out. Not quite sure why they made that ball the perfect size to fit down that hole.

I reload 9 and .45, and use MG CMJ for the 9mm. Not sure if .40 is different, but CMJ refers to the bullet being jacketed completely. No exposed lead at the base of the bullet like FMJ. Kind of like how the JHP bullets are. No exposed lead potentially means less smoke depending on what type of powder is being used. I use N320 with cast .45 bullets and notice very little smoke, so I don't know how much the CMJ bullet matters. I would think its cleaner, and pretty much limits lead vapor when fired, but I'm not totally sure. I use the CMJ for 9mm simply because I've had no issues and its what I started with.

The front sight on my 9 Pro (brand new) was set to the left also. It was visibly noticeable. I took it to the range to confirm, and groups were far right at 25 yards. Brought it back to the LGS where a buddy confirmed using a laser bore sight that the sights needed to be adjusted. He was kind enough to drift the front sight back to the center and applied LocTite. The front sight ended up drifting back left after about 800 or so rounds. He ended up sending it back to S&W for me to be corrected. Took a couple of weeks, but all has been well since then. The repair tag didn't specify how they corrected, but the slide wasn't replaced so I assume the front sight was replaced, perhaps the original was a tad undersized for some reason. The sights on my wife's JG were perfect out of the box.

I have approx. 9000 or so rounds thru my 9 Pro, and no major issues to speak of. You might want to check for the newer striker (I believe the old one was black, the new one is silver), there were some reported failures with the older striker. I guess the only problem I had was that the front sight would tend to drift left after a few hundred or so rounds, even after loc-tite. Sent the slide in, so far no issues since, but their repair tag is fairly vague so I don't know what they did. I believe S&W switched to a larger sear spring after late 2010, but I'm not sure if it only applies to the PC sears. Some of the PC sears were having a failure to reset problem, but so far I haven't had the problem.

You might want to wait a bit before resorting to tuning the mags. Here in HI. we also have the 10rnd. mag cap for pistol, and my wife and I both had the same issues with our M&Ps. Both loosened up quite a bit after a leaving the mags fully loaded like posted above, and after a thousand or so rounds thru the gun. We have probably a little more then 9000 rounds through each of the pistols now, and fully loaded mags seat easily with the slide forward. I still remember our first match though, we both dropped mags on the ground because of not seating them forcefully enough. I can still tell which mags are newer, as it is still noticeably harder to load the 10th round. I actually find it easier to load the last round in these mags by hand rather than using the speed loader.