Well that's my point exactly ... having to tweak a pistol with so much extra work and throwing away the original parts seems to me counter productive compared to the benefit of an original purchase ... where the bit's you want are there to begin with ...

Some pistols are cheaper because the "workers" are a cheaper over head ... CZ pistols are a great example ... the quality in those is the same or better than the Sig's we now use ... many of the guys in the services "Queens Medal" compitions at Bisley who are in our Royal Marines and are issued Sig's are finding they cannot stand the round count as long as the tweaked old Browning's some of the Navy guys have within their same "Sevice" ...

The Navy are a lucky "Service" and often win in the Queens Medal comp at Bisley within the joint service representation for the comp because a hell of a lot of their weapons see very little hard use on board ship ... then when it comes to "sourcing" a good weapon they are in a much better position ...

The Marines use theirs to death ... therefore the only way to get a better weapon is to get a new one and the new Sig's are not standing up as well as the old Brownings from the "feed back" from last years Queens Medal shooters ... or put it another way ... the "Navy" who are not S/F's were scoring higher than the Marines who are "S/F's" and have a lot more trigger time under their belt ... save ofcourse for the fact that some "Navy" guys who are good shooters and in the team can be detailed "duties" so they do nothing else but "shoot" ...

The point being that the metal used on the older stuff is "better" seemingly than the newer as everything these days seems built to a "replacement standard" so more income can be earned ... the older stuff was built to an "engineering standard" and does'nt break ...

Not good on "income" ... great on "reputation" ...

For my part I would prefer an "old" .45 or pay for a modern custom .45 ... and limit the guns I had to higher quality rather than "multiples" of modern "replacement standard" weapons ...

Not for nothing are the top "custom makers" using their own slides and frames and not just working on the "internals" of pistols ...