I know Savage did pyramid-testing for all their MSR-10s. Keep in mind they introduced 16”, 18”, and 22.5” barrels and different gas system lengths in .308, 6.5CM, and now 6CM which I just found out.
I just can’t take the repeated customer beta-test model seriously, so I watch people go through 5 years of being test subjects on their dime for the manufacturers and wonder if they enjoy being abused like this, or just haplessly wandered into it.
I know when I drive over 2 hours to get to the range, pay that kind of gas money, range fees, ammo costs, and my time, the last thing I want to be doing is jerking around with someone else’s abortion when I have targets that need attention. My expectation is the firearm will go bang with each pull of the trigger and lock back after last round.
If they don’t work like that, I’m not happy. You know that feeling when you purchased something and were all excited about it, go to use it and it’s a turd? Your stomach sinks and you know you’ve been suckered? I prefer to avoid those moments as much as possible.
A single range trip can run $300-$600, depending on gas and ammo costs mostly, neither of which have gone down. Should I roll the dice on a low price point rifle that is more likely to waste me $300 every time I try to take it to the range and get it to work? Why is that my job if I didn’t build it? Who is going to put that gas back in my tank, or police-up and reimburse me for all those smashed cartridges and spent cases?
And again, I can buy a known-performer from a company that built theirs to satisfy military contracts, for less money if I go with an ArmaLite as the base, which has a superior BCG with sprung firing pin, then add to it what I want.
KAC has been through so many decades of testing and refinement, and it took them many years to get their rifles to work. The KAC rifles will break even with a turd-spitter if you add up each range trip for someone who is stubbornly trying to get their rifle to work, only with each pull of the trigger on the KAC rifles, you will get a hit most likely, be happy, then drive home with a smile. With a beta-tester rifle, you end up paying a lot, wasting a bunch of ammo, ruining the brass, don’t have the desired target effects because you’re distracted with diagnosing and malfunction clearances, then you get to drive home knowing there’s a fat turd in your knock-off CCP import rifle case, made from Chidura nyron, died eff dee eee with human urea from the Yellow River, with stitchwork that sucks, zippers that skip teeth, and acetyl hardware that snaps from minimum pressure in the cold.
To add insult to injury, the soft cases are stolen patterns from quality US gear companies who went through all that work to develop and refine the design, only to have our enemies come along and steal everything, then send the patterns to a slave labor sweat shop and crank them out for $19 dealer price per. US retailers lap that up and sell them for $99 shamelessly. With the PA-10, you get a great deal with the imported knock-off case included.
Next question for me is, how many of the small parts are imported?