.38 S&W will NOT chamber in a .38 Special revolver......I have tried, trust me. If .38 S&W does fit in the chamber of a .38 Special revolver, than you have oversized chambers.

If you want a decent .38 S&W revolver, the Victory revolvers chambered for British 38/200 (same dimensions as .38 S&W) are priced much lower on the market than the somewhat rarer .38 Special variants.

.38 S&W ammo made by Fiocchi, Remington and Magtech is underloaded and weak, made that way so no one blows up an old break-top pocket revolver and sues them. I would not rely on these for any kind of defense. I have had rounds of MagTech .38 S&W bounce off of a 1/4" thick polymer target backer I use to stick my targets on........I was shooting my Victory the one day and heard an object hit the wood of the outbuilding 40 feet behind me, and realized the .38 S&W slugs were bouncing off the target backer and flying over my head.......I immediately stopped shooting.....I get more penetration into wood from my .36 repro percussion blackpowder revolvers with light 20 gr. target loads of Pyrodex and a round ball, than I got from .38 S&W factory ammo.

Old Western Scrounger makes 38/200 ammo that is a little more powerful.

I personally do not see the use of trying to play around with expensive obsolete or oddball rounds like .32 H&R Magnum or .38 S&W when there are PLENTY of great used S&W K and L frames out there chambered in good old .38 Special and .357 Magnum. Like was already said, .38 Special hollow base wadcutters probably have as light a recoil as any .38 S&W anyway, I have fired both .32 H&R Magnum (fired some today) .38 S&W and .38 Special HBWC, and some of the .38 Special wadcutter rounds were lighter than the .38 S&W's. In particular the UltraMax .38 Special wadcutters felt like gallery rounds, hardly even felt any recoil.