Dan and I visited Mec-Gar’s booth on Range Day, but I wanted to go back to get a better look at their new magazines. While I was there, I also got a look at their relatively new revisions to their 1911 magazines too. Before I get into the mags themselves, I want to commend Mec-Gar for the effort that they’ve put into these designs. The had their engineers onsite to talk about the design work, and as a magazine nerd, I dig that. So let’s jump right into the magazines!
Mec-Gar Glock Magazines
Mec-Gar’s big release for this year are the Glock magazines. These are full nitrided steel bodies, and have 18 round capacity. One magazine works in anything with a G17 length frame (G34/G45/G47), and the other works in G19 sized frames (G49). The G19 magazine has a taller floorplate to prevent over-insertion, so make sure that you buy those if you have a G19, and not the G17-format magazines.
The magazine release cutout is in fact that, and not a hole. Mec-Gar designed these mags to work with the OEM plastic magazine release in a Glock, rather than requiring a swap to a metal one. This method is more intensive to machine, but certainly speaks to the quality of the mags.
Like many other Mec-Gar mags, we’ve got a witness hole for every round. Gotta love that.
The magazine spring is fairly standard, with wider loops at the bottom, tapering to smaller ones where the magazine funnels to a single-stack. Dan and I both really dig the high visibility, zombie green follower too.
The locking plate is smartly designed too. It has a retaining ledge on the button part, which helps to keep it locked into the floorplate better. This should help to keep the magazines assembled when dropped.
Overall, I think it is great that Mec-Gar has released Glock mags. They’re the big name in magazines, and now they’ve made an iteration of the most popular handgun magazine on the market. MSRP is $29.99, but street price should be closer to $22-ish. These should be available soon, so keep an eye out on whatever retailer you normally buy magazines from.
As an aside, we asked about future Glock mag offerings, like different length magazines for different sized guns. As we were told “the top half was the hard part to make, so making them longer or shorter shouldn’t be too hard”. The reps did state that they want to full bring the G17 & G19 magazines to market before announcing anything else, so keep an ear out for that.
Mec-Gar 1911 Magazines
Mec-Gar also had some of their new-ish 1911 magazines at the booth. They’ve redesigned parts of them to improve reliability, and I dig that.
The 9mm mags have a rib in the front of the magazine tube. This crimps the magazine over, so that the tube itself is just long enough for a 9mm cartridge. Many 9mm 1911 magazines are just .45 ACP mags with a shim in the tube, so I dig this intentional change.
The other big change (featured on both 9mm and .45 mags) is the floorplate. Rather than coming off of the front of the magazine, is slides off from the back.
When a magazine hits the deck, it tends to land pretty squarely on the back corner of the floorplate. With magazines where the floorplate comes off from the front, this can lead to them flying off when dropped. Obviously losing the floorplate is bad, as the magazine will disassemble right there. This design is pretty smart, and I dig that.
Capacity is 10 rounds with the 9mm, and 8 with the .45. The tubes are nitrided, so they should retain tension on the feed lips pretty well.
These are already out, with an MSRP of $35.95 for the .45 mag, and $32.95 for the 9mm. However, they’re closer to $22-$24 street price. As I’m midway through typing this up, I stopped to order 3 of each magazine to test with my 1911s.
My Thoughts
I’ve already given Mec-Gar a ton of money over the years. You probably have too, as they’re the OEM for many companies. The Glock magazines look stellar, and I can’t wait to test them out. The 1911 mags look promising too, and I’ve already got a few on the way. I can’t wait to pit them against the venerable Wilson Combat mags that I’ve been using for a long time.
I’ve never had the ability to put names and faces to the designs, but now I have. It’s clear that the folks at Mec-Gar care about what they make. I understand how important a magazine is for the function of a handgun, and they certainly do too. It’s akin to your car’s transmission; if the transmission is bad, the car is bad, regardless of how good the rest of it is. I just appreciate that the Italian and American sides of Mec-Gar are really excited to be making some of the best magazines on the market.
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