Taurus vs other guns

[Taurus Fan]

Originally Posted by Archetype_wyo

I own a PT1911 and its nice. Most of the bugs with Taurus pistols have been worked out such as the wimpy ambi-safety on the 1911 and whatnot. As with any brand new line of anything for a company there are going to be flaws. I'm sure when Colt first started producing Mr. Browning's gun they had some hiccups, afterall it wasn't their design to begin with...

Yeah the stories of the 1911's safety breaking are all from the early production guns, seems they screwed up and had a bad run. I bought a new S&W .357 in 1980, the cylinder release latch sheared off the first time I fired it so I reckon it can happen to anybody.

I've owned a PT-92, PT-22, and now have a PT-911, they were all great for me, very reliable. The PT-92 I bought in 1985, did A LOT of shooting with it until it was stolen just two years ago, it was still going strong after 20 years.

[SightNSqueeze]

Originally Posted by Archetype_wyo

I own a PT1911 and its nice. Most of the bugs with Taurus pistols have been worked out such as the wimpy ambi-safety on the 1911 and whatnot. As with any brand new line of anything for a company there are going to be flaws. I'm sure when Colt first started producing Mr. Browning's gun they had some hiccups, afterall it wasn't their design to begin with...

And a lot people conveniently forget about the problems with the Smith & Wesson Sigma when it first came out in the early 90s. The Sigma was our tactical team's and SORT team's first auto pistol. I was one of the instructors that ran the officers through the service pistol transition course and we had a time keeping loaded magazines from just falling out of the S&W Sigmas during live fire exercises. They had odd feeling trigger pulls and didn't inspire confidence with officers who had previously excelled with the 9mm S&W 5906 service autos and the .38 S&W and Ruger service revolvers. The S&W Sigma design was eventually improved, but not before we dropped it entirely from our inventory and opted for the Glock 22/23 series of pistols which I understand are still in use today.

Now, I won't repeat or delve into the problems Smith & Wesson had with shabby workmanship in their early-90s “high end” revolvers. I remember the gun store owner who I moonlighted for sending back a brand new .44 mag S&W Model 629 and a .45 ACP/AR S&W Model 625 because the cylinders where not aligned with the frames and in one case (I can't remember which one) there was too big of a gap between the front of the chambers and the forcing cone. Even the metal to metal fitting was cheaply done and one could see the unevenness right out of the box. Hardly the "Grand Old Gun Maker" that Elmer Keith, Bill Jordon, or Skeeter Skelton would have supported when Smith & Wesson really was that sort of gun maker. At that sad period in Smith & Wesson history, Taurus made a better gun and successfully scooped much of S&Ws market. Taurus quality has not gone down since and has kept pace with, or stayed ahead of Smith & Wesson as the later struggled to redeem itself.

[KW Gary M]

Originally Posted by SightNSqueeze

And a lot people conveniently forget about the problems with the Smith & Wesson Sigma when it first came out in the early 90s. The Sigma was our tactical team's and SORT team's first auto pistol. I was one of the instructors that ran the officers through the service pistol transition course and we had a time keeping loaded magazines from just falling out of the S&W Sigmas during live fire exercises. They had odd feeling trigger pulls and didn't inspire confidence with officers who had previously excelled with the 9mm S&W 5906 service autos and the .38 S&W and Ruger service revolvers. The S&W Sigma design was eventually improved, but not before we dropped it entirely from our inventory and opted for the Glock 22/23 series of pistols which I understand are still in use today.

Never mind the Sigmas of the 90's. I shot a Sigma that was bought in 2008 and it is a piece of crap next to any Taurus I have ever show. S&W should be embarassed to have their great name on that gun. I'll take a Taurus over a Sigma, or Glock for that matter, any time. I have seen many threads where people bash a Taurus and I make the same offer. PM me for my dealer's address if you want to get rid of that shitty Taurus I'll pay the shipping to send it to me at my Dealer's Shop. Strangely enough, nobody has ever taken me up on my offer to rid them of such junk.

Taurus is just a good gun at a low cost.

[SightNSqueeze]

Originally Posted by KW Gary M

Never mind the Sigmas of the 90's. I shot a Sigma that was bought in 2008 and it is a piece of crap next to any Taurus I have ever show. S&W should be embarassed to have their great name on that gun. I'll take a Taurus over a Sigma, or Glock for that matter, any time. I have seen many threads where people bash a Taurus and I make the same offer. PM me for my dealer's address if you want to get rid of that shitty Taurus I'll pay the shipping to send it to me at my Dealer's Shop. Strangely enough, nobody has ever taken me up on my offer to rid them of such junk.

Taurus is just a good gun at a low cost.

Agreed. You would think with CNC machining technology and other advanced manufacturing techniques already adopted by comparative upstarts like Springfield Armory, Taurus, and to a lesser extent, Glock, would have rubbed off on old established gun makers like Smith & Wesson and Colt. You would think that they were putting their own guns to their heads and committing suicide instead. I love their old guns. I have a .45 Smith & Wesson 1938 Brazilian military contract version of their Model 1917 service revolver. It is the epitome of quality and workmanship. The new guns just don't come close and probably never will.

[twtalbot]

Originally Posted by SPOCAHP ANAR

What are your views on the Taurus brand.

...It appears that they copy other popular brands retail for about 200 less...

They got their start on Smith and Wesson machinery and early on, made an improvement to the Smith design, changing the mainspring from a flat one to coiled.

[big shrek]

The only fuss I have about Taurus is that sometimes you need to fiddle with 'em a little to get the best out of them.

But then...you pretty much have to tune ANY gun you get...no matter who from.

Feed throats are no longer polished & prepared by MFR's like they used to be.
Triggers are lawyered into 8 pounds of yuk.
Safety switches are more numerous...whatever happened to Being Responsible??

[Archetype_wyo]

What I will say is these old gun mfgs just don't understand that people want bargain as well as quality. Taurus meets and exceeds that and then some. Glock does the same, I have since warmed up to them but I still think they are ugly but they are competitively priced and work so I will probably get a G19 one of these days. The fact of the matter is people want guns but don't want that name brand price which is where companies like Taurus and others (Henry & Marlin even though they are becoming namebrand) succeed. They make quality firearms at a reasonable price. I just don't see paying $2,000 for a 1911 when I get essentially the same thing that I would more or less customize it anyways. Same goes for the AR-15, I'm not gonna go out and bust a fat grand or more on a rifle I can get bare-bones and customize along the way. Just doesn't make any sense. These companies need to take a wiff of what they are shovelin and see the light.

[KW Gary M]

Originally Posted by big shrek

The only fuss I have about Taurus is that sometimes you need to fiddle with 'em a little to get the best out of them.

But then...you pretty much have to tune ANY gun you get...no matter who from.

Feed throats are no longer polished & prepared by MFR's like they used to be.
Triggers are lawyered into 8 pounds of yuk.
Safety switches are more numerous...whatever happened to Being Responsible??

"Whatever happened to being responsible?" I think you answered that in the sentence before you asked the question. Lawyers and too many of them jusming on a law suite and bringing it to the media for the anti gun liberals to see and pressure the political people. Sadly a decent law abiding citizen who wishes to carry a gun to protect himself and his loved ones become the vilan and the vilans cry "Rodney King" to the media.

[sunwheel29]

Originally Posted by Archetype_wyo

What I will say is these old gun mfgs just don't understand that people want bargain as well as quality. Taurus meets and exceeds that and then some. .

I think the actual term is value. The public wants value for money. Bargain doesn't seem to last long when the public realizes that this, that or the other 'bargain' gun doesn't work right and the company goes under. Remember the 'ring of fire' manuacturers who made .25 autos and .380s out of pot metal?
Lorcin, Jennings, Bryco, etc...
Where are they now.

A couple of years ago, the place I work at got bought out by brain dead yankees who don't understand anything except trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. They laid people off right and left, did all sorts of drastic changes and every change they made cost them profits as the quality went into the crapper.
Their solution of course was to lay more people off and raise the prices.
You would think that one of these morons would stop and think, "hey, wait a minnit, we made more money before the changes, maybe we need to go back."
But yankees being graspy and greedy by nature don't think that way.
One of the company sucks who was taking up for them was going on and on about how 'thats just business."
No, thats bad business.

When you go into business you can decide, do I want to be Mercedes, do I want to be Ford or do I want to be Yugo?


The reality is that Mercedes and Ford will be around for another century or two. Where is Yugo?
The public will buy quality. The public will buy value. The public won't buy crap after they realize what it is.


S&W needs to quit trying to exploit trends (Gawd Awmighty, why would any manufacturer really need not one, not two but three DIFFERENT plastic pistol frame models), and trying to exploit their customers by doubling the prices on steel guns just because they figure if the public will pay steel prices for plastic guns they would pay more for steel. Their prices were pretty much the same from 2000 to 1998 or so. I know because I bought multiple N and L frames over that period and paid between $325 to $350 for all of them, new, out the door.
This means that the distributor was charging roughly the same price for over 15 years. Well from 2001 to 2008, the prices doubled. Last new S&W I bought was around $610 back early in this decade. Thats an artificial increase in price. Wages sure didn't double. Rent didn't double. Car prices went up, but didn't double.
The reality is S&W figured if you would pay $600 for a Glock which cost $98 to manufacture that they could stick it to you and make you pay twice what you were paying for a forged steel gun.
Notice the same thing happened with a lot of 1911s. They went from $600 to $700 guns to $1000 guns almost overnight.

[TXplt]

I own several Tauruses and have been very happy with them in general. Many of their designs are innovative and are good guns and ideas.

HOWEVER, I have experienced as of late problems (major problems) that were quality assurance related which I didn't experience with other guns. Specifically my PT-1911 had a sear malfunction which on occasion would just make a "click" on trigger pull with the hammer hanging up and not dropping (sometimes being able to be cleared by a hammer recycle and sometimes requiring a tap-rack) as well as a public defender which had the cylinder advance pawl malfunctioning by striking the cartridge heads and preventing the cylinder from rotating. BOTH problems were discovered within the first few rounds with the gun "right out of the box."

I've NOT been real impressed with their customer service--unlike most other gun manufacturers the warranty service required return on my own dime and took 6-8 weeks to get the gun back with little status information on the gun. Other manufacturers have usually gotten my gun fixed and returned in a week or 2.

The good news is when the gun was fixed it performed flawlessly, and my other tauruses have worked fine. I think now were I to buy another taurus, I'd only get it from someone who didn't have a "no returns" policy (i.e. if the gun didn't work on firing I could return it to the DEALER and get a new gun or my money back). I sure do like the Public Defender but didn't like to wait so long to get it fixed (likewise with the 1911). Again, the OTHER manufacturers customer service was better with prepaid shipping both ways and speedy turnaround.

Hope this helps

[Archetype_wyo]

I will re-iterate that every company has duds. Taurus I believe still has a really good track record and has VERY VERY good pricing, with their top end guns at the competition's mid-level gun's pricing.

[mitchr]

The main thing I look for when shopping for a pistol is reports on the customer service. Gun forums, gun stores, friends & neighbors. I find that any name brand manufacturer, for the most part, make a good product but all of them have a bad one get out the door once in a while. It's the "nature of the beast" in mass produced anything. It's how a company handles their mistakes that really counts. Then it comes down to how it feels in your hand, etc.

[dodge310]

Holly Batman, talk about reviving old threads....

I can honestly say that I think the Taurus is the most uderated gun. It is excellant in quality and will last for many many years. I have had a 22lr with 2" bbl for about 10-11 years now. Wouldn't trade it for anything. I has been very trust worthy.

I've shot a buddy of mines Taurus 357 many many times. It shoots excellant. I dont think it is quite as hard shooting as my Smith, but it is very accurate, dependable and will be around for many more years to come.