Beretta 1301 Tactical

[ricky_bobby]

Speaking of Adam - updated SGA adapter ordered (always bothered me it did not fill the gap in the SGA stock) and HGA retrofit kit for Zhukov ordered - now all I need is a new SMRT follower (because I'm a fanboi) and I'm officially dialed in - thankful that I can use the whole M-Lok slot on the Zhukov now for a Magpul M-Lok QD which is my preferred QD attachment for the forend/handguard on my rifles/shotguns)

[TCinVA]

just picked up the 1301 and want to do some mods , looking at Aridus and GG&G is there a preference ?

I greatly prefer Aridus.

Partly because they actually designed most of the parts that GG&G merely copied.

But mostly because they work better.

Weekend before last I was in Dallas at the Tactical Conference when Wayne Dobbs came into the admin building and said that another presenter had a 1301 that was behaving strangely. It took putting her rear sight fully to the left to even get it close to being zeroed and he noted that there were a couple of other issues and said that I should talk to her about it. Well, I did just that.

Turns out her front sight was installed crooked which likely explained the zero issue. I told her how to get that fixed and asked if she had any other issues with the gun. She mentioned that she couldn't get a good cheek weld on the gun. I looked at her stock and instantly understood why...she had the GG&G adapter for the 870 version of the Magpul SGA on it. Because the 870 version of the SGA doesn't come close to fitting the 1301 well, forcing it on there creates some significantly sub-optimal ergonomics. The wrist angle gets weird extending the trigger reach and it created enough extra drop for her that even with the raised cheek piece on the stock she was still too low on the gun to see through the sights without raising her head.

That's not a worry with the Aridus SGA adapter. There may be somebody out there who finds that the 870 adapted via GG&G works better for their anatomy, but I've never met that person. I generally see clients who ended up with it because they either thought they were buying the Aridus package (LTT had pictures of the Aridus package up on their site for a very long time after they stopped buying Aridus parts) or they bought not knowing that the 870 and 590 stocks have significantly different implications for fitment of the gun. Either way, they are generally annoyed with the additional ergonomic challenges that range from minor annoyance to almost deal-breaking in a couple of cases.

The GG&G side saddle is a truly hateful thing. It uses the Mesa Tactical style rubber tube that has too much grip on the shells to start and eventually has too little requiring it to be replaced where it sucks to try and get shells out of the side saddle again, it holds the shells at a really weird angle that doesn't facilitate loading, and the hard corner on the mounting bracket is just a great way to introduce your trigger finger to sharp metal with force and velocity if you shoot the gun from the support side. "Who runs a shotgun from their left shoulder?" Left handed people. People who are suddenly left handed because their right hand doesn't work. And pretty much anyone who might be dealing with a corner that opens to the left if they're trying to not get shot.

The optic mount and forend adapter are bang-on copies of the CROM and the Aridus forend adapter so they don't seem to pose any challenges that I've seen in client use. The GG&G bolt handle used to not have the locking lobe at the end of it and would pull out when you tried to charge the gun. They've since changed that to add the proper locking lobe at the end so it shouldn't do that anymore...but I'd still keep the factory part instead of theirs.

And I've said repeatedly stick to the 1301 factory follower because I've seen the aftermarket followers cause issues. The one exception to that is the Aridus follower, but I haven't seen enough of them in the wild on a large enough number of guns to give it a full endorsement. I can say that I know the design of that was tweaked a bunch of times to avoid the issue of hanging on the transition between an aftermarket magazine tube extension and the factory tube. (A bigger deal when the factory wasn't shipping a full length magazine tube) And it was sized properly so it wouldn't back out past the shell stop and end up parked in the action locking the gun up hard as I've seen with multiple other followers. (But the Nordic follower most prominently) I'm running one in my gun with the Nordic tube extension and so far no issues. Same with multiple clients. But I need to see more on more guns to have complete confidence in recommending them.