Okay... I went ahead and ordered a couple, to test in my spare range mags, before trusting them to carry status. they arrived today, so I have not had a chance to give them a workout at the range, I can give you some first impressions. My main reason for getting them was not actually to squeek an extra 8th round into the 7 round mag (or 9th round into the 8 round mag). The reason was to make loading the last round into the mag (without needing to use an UpLULA
) and loading the (topped off) mag itself into the pistol without litrally Slamming it home. MagGuts does seem to do this.
For simplicity, the only mag I'm referring to here is the FLUSH (7 round) mag. Also, rather than constantly refering to 'the 7th round' vs 'the 8th round', I simply write 'Last Round'.
The Follower fits nicely and is very stabile. It does not 'rock' back & forth like some metal followers I've seen.
One big difference, which possibly makes it easier to get the last round (now, the 8th round) loaded, is that the 'Legs' of the follower is shorter than the legs of the factory follower. With the factory follower, after the last round is loaded, there is only (approx) 1/16th" extra 'push'. With the MagGuts internals, after the last round is loaded, there's at least twice the room (1/8th"?) in extra push. This not only makes it easier to get the last round loaded into the mag, but also makes it MUCH easier to load the (topped off) mag into the pistol when the slide is closed. All that's needed to load a full mag now, is a moderate Push, rather than a hard slam.
When hand cycling Snap-Caps, all rounds seem to feed and chamber without binding and the follower has been successfully engaging the Slide Stop after ejecting the last round.
If there's interest, I'll post follow-ups after putting several Hundred rounds down range. As mentioned above, I'm not going to blindl trust them as a carry mag... I want to test the new internals before considering using them for SD.
