1911’s in general, 9mm versions specifically

Anybody ever watch this guy and start getting bad ideas?

 
Would be interested to hear your pros and cons vs flat surfaces ...

Part personal opinion, part conjecture, part experience: it's 95% irrelevant/personal preference/aesthetics, and the 5% that can make a difference, won't be picked up by 99% of shooters. Length is, by far, what matters.

That said, this flat checkered face, with no curve or radius on the contact surface, does allow just a bit of perception advantage in making sure you're pressing straight-back. But you have to be paying attention to it to notice. The pointy bits and the 90-degree edge of the face make it more clear if you're not pressing evenly - it's more noticeable if one side of the pad of your finger is experiencing more pressure than the other.

It's a marginal thing, but a little useful if you want it to be, especially when learning a new gun or in really spending some time focusing on your trigger press, but should be background after a certain point.
 
Did you have to do any “fitting”?

I did, but very little. The overall height of the bow was just a touch higher than the raceways for it cut into the grip, so it wasn't freely moving, and required an ounce or two of pressure to move. If you hold the frame nose-down, with just the trigger inserted, it should easily fall forward on its own weight after you press it back and let go. If a 1911/2011 trigger is physically too heavy, or there's too much friction in its movement, or the sear-spring returning the trigger is too light, you can get hammer-follow after a shot. So, it seemed necessary to fit it, even if the pressure needed to move it was so light.

This was a super easy fitting - just took the height of the tabs on top of the bow down a little with a cratex bit. I didn't want there to be any vertical slop, so it took a few light passes on each side and checking each time, but overall it took less than 5 minutes to get that part of the fitting done. Maybe another 30 minutes to get the takeup and overtravel adjusted, given the need to reassemble and disassemble several times.

The quality of the trigger is excellent, btw - the metal in the bow is substantial, looks like machined steel rather than a stamping, and is fairly smooth, despite some visible machining marks. Various chamfering cuts on it as well, along with two set-screws on the front instead of just one. A lot of thought and quality went into these triggers - probably the nicest I've seen, though I don't have a large sample-size of ones being made the last few years.

Photos of the tabs on top of the bow that were polished down a bit:

Trigger Tabs - Copy.jpeg
 
All my triggers are medium length, sell me on short.

Long and medium "feel" better to me personally, in the feelsies category of handling a gun, but the longer a trigger is, the more you generally start seeing people send their shots left and low-left, especially when shooting at speed (for a right-handed shooter, they go right for a lefty).

My take on it, is that it's mostly an issue of geometry, between how the trigger-finger is oriented with the trigger - ideal orientation is 90-degrees at break. Slightly longer triggers have the pad of the finger pressing a bit more on the shooter's strong-side of the trigger, and a bit less on the weak-side - leading to a press that's not actually straight back to the nose. It's something that can be controlled for a bit in concentrated slow-fire, but when you speed things up and go fast, it tends to show up more.

I also suspect a short trigger makes things a bit more forgiving with your strong-hand grip when your trigger-finger isn't perfectly isolated from the rest of the muscles in your hand.

Overall though, shorter triggers tend to tighten groups up better, especially at speed. Best thing is to experiment and give it a hard go for a couple of cases of ammo.
 
I wanted to ask this in this thread as it's been an incredible source of information as opposed to starting my own and I know this has beat to death in a lot of regards but I'm going to ask again...

Through some good fortune at work, I'm more or less being given an "allowance" to purchase a gift for myself for my 20 year anniversary and I've decided it's going to be a 2011 and optic. What I'm hoping to confirm is that I'm on the right track with thinking a Staccato C w/ an Acro P2 is about as good as it gets.

Some qualifiers - I'm not much of a pistol guy but aim to become more proficient in that arena, relatively competent with a rifle but could always stand to get better there as well. I'm also not much of a tinkerer so thinking going the Staccato route will be more failsafe as far as immediate component swaps and other things I see referenced with Tisas and the like. Additionally, weight is definitely a factor as I will be carrying while backpack hunting so the sub 30oz type pistol is absolutely more appealing for that use case.

I'm not married to the optic choice but I'm near certain I want something with an enclosed emitter and inherently durable. From what I gather the Acro and maybe Trijicon RCR are really at the top of the heap in that arena.

Apologies for the long winded post but I look forward to any insight anyone is willing to give. Definitely looking forward to making the purchase and working on a new discipline.
 
Long and medium "feel" better to me personally, in the feelsies category of handling a gun, but the longer a trigger is, the more you generally start seeing people send their shots left and low-left, especially when shooting at speed (for a right-handed shooter, they go right for a lefty).

My take on it, is that it's mostly an issue of geometry, between how the trigger-finger is oriented with the trigger - ideal orientation is 90-degrees at break. Slightly longer triggers have the pad of the finger pressing a bit more on the shooter's strong-side of the trigger, and a bit less on the weak-side - leading to a press that's not actually straight back to the nose. It's something that can be controlled for a bit in concentrated slow-fire, but when you speed things up and go fast, it tends to show up more.

I also suspect a short trigger makes things a bit more forgiving with your strong-hand grip when your trigger-finger isn't perfectly isolated from the rest of the muscles in your hand.

Overall though, shorter triggers tend to tighten groups up better, especially at speed. Best thing is to experiment and give it a hard go for a couple of cases of ammo.
I wonder how much difference 90 degrees at beginning of press matters also?

My CZ (known for long triggers and many comp guys swap them out) is too long for me at the beginning of the DA pull, which makes for awkward shooting. It's fine when it resets to SA.

My Tisas 1911 is also just a little too long. But my Bul 1911 comes with a short trigger from factory, and I can get onto it immediately - don't have to think about it / don't get distracted by it. Makes a massive difference.
 
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