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Taurus CT G2 and G29 Carbines?
hermiem
Member Posts: 261 ✭✭✭
I'm getting "the urge to splerge (?) again! I'd appreciate any positive feedback regarding the above 2 listed firearms including prices. Also, any substitutions (Hopefully available.) that are in about the same price range and either of comparative or superior quality? One last item please - Are there after market higher capacity (greater than 10 rounds) available magazines available for these weapons? And if so and approximate price? As always - thanks guys!
Mike
Mike
Comments
I'd have to assume these are at least capable of accepting higher capacity mags, but lacking more information, the only safe thing to assume is either that they don't, or that they take some sort of hard-to-find expensive proprietary magazine.
Would I buy one of these? Certainly not at the listed price.
Beretta CX4 is basically the same thing, its tried and true, and it takes easy to find high cap Beretta 92 pistol magazines (which can also be shared with your Beretta sidearm, if you have one). These Taurus carbines cost $650; the Berettas can be found for $100 more. For an extra $100, I'd rather have the word "Beretta" on my gun.
9mm AR-15 platform guns can be had for under $1000, and will give you quite a bit more flexibility than this thing from Taurus, in terms of customization/modification potential.
And there are a number of other 9mm carbines on the market worth looking at. For under $300, a lot of people think the Hi-point is actually pretty good.
Edit, responding to below:
quote:But wasn't Taurus formally an actual Beretta factory in Brazil or some other S. American Country?Yes its true that Taurus was founded using left over tooling from a closed down Beretta factory in Brazil. You can see that the older Taurus semi-auto pistols are all Beretta clones. Not incidentally, many of Beretta revolvers are basically Smith and Wesson knockoffs, from a short time when the same parent owned both companies and transferred designs from Smith to Taurus.
Anyway, Taurus itself isn't new to 9mm carbines, its been making them for at least 20 years (yes, starting with a cloned Beretta design!). So far as I can tell, this particular carbine isn't a Beretta clone; its a "sporterized" version of a proprietary submachine gun that Taurus makes: http://tinyurl.com/oymc4hk
Regardless, the Taurus gun itself is probably OK. To me this comes down to a value proposition. . .is the quality of this gun proportionate to the asking price? I honestly don't know, but the Taurus name really doesn't inspire me with a lot of confidence, doubly because this particular gun hasn't been on the market all that long.
On Hi-point, I don't actually own one, but my understanding is that the manufacturer is American, they have an unlimited lifetime warranty, and that even though the guns are low end, customer service is actually pretty good. If you're having issues with yours, I wouldn't hesitate to have the thing reworked by the manufacturer.
Also, I currently have 2 Hi-Point carbines in 9MM and .45 ACP. I call them my "fun guns" - and they are fun guns to shoot. With that being said however, the old adage is true that "ya get what ya pay for." (I've had mechanical issues with both - replacement parts tbat I could replace.And, ya really need to "tighten things up" after you've put a couple hundred rounds through them. They certainly are NOT conventually made guns. BUT - for the money ya can't go wrong with them.
Thanks Again,
Mike
quote:Originally posted by beantownshootah
Taurus' website is confusing here; they don't specify what type of magazines these take.
I'd have to assume these are at least capable of accepting higher capacity mags, but lacking more information, the only safe thing to assume is either that they don't, or that they take some sort of hard-to-find expensive proprietary magazine.
Would I buy one of these? Certainly not at the listed price.
Beretta CX4 is basically the same thing, its tried and true, and it takes easy to find high cap Beretta 92 pistol magazines (which can also be shared with your Beretta sidearm, if you have one). These Taurus carbines cost $650; the Berettas can be found for $100 more. For an extra $100, I'd rather have the word "Beretta" on my gun.
9mm AR-15 platform guns can be had for under $1000, and will give you quite a bit more flexibility than this thing from Taurus, in terms of customization/modification potential.
And there are a number of other 9mm carbines on the market worth looking at. For under $300, a lot of people think the Hi-point is actually pretty good.
"Bean" - Thanks for the expedient reply. I thought that it was fairly "pricey." And you are right - I'd rather have the word Beretta on the firearm than Taurus. (But wasn't Taurus formally an actual Beretta factory in Brazil or some other S. American Country?) Anyway - you are right.
Also, I currently have 2 Hi-Point carbines in 9MM and .45 ACP. I call them my "fun guns" - and they are fun guns to shoot. With that being said however, the old adage is true that "ya get what ya pay for." (I've had mechanical issues with both - replacement parts tbat I could replace.And, ya really need to "tighten things up" after you've put a couple hundred rounds through them. They certainly are NOT conventually made guns. BUT - for the money ya can't go wrong with them.
Thanks Again,
Mike
quote:Originally posted by beantownshootah
Taurus' website is confusing here; they don't specify what type of magazines these take.
I'd have to assume these are at least capable of accepting higher capacity mags, but lacking more information, the only safe thing to assume is either that they don't, or that they take some sort of hard-to-find expensive proprietary magazine.
Would I buy one of these? Certainly not at the listed price.
Beretta CX4 is basically the same thing, its tried and true, and it takes easy to find high cap Beretta 92 pistol magazines (which can also be shared with your Beretta sidearm, if you have one). These Taurus carbines cost $650; the Berettas can be found for $100 more. For an extra $100, I'd rather have the word "Beretta" on my gun.
9mm AR-15 platform guns can be had for under $1000, and will give you quite a bit more flexibility than this thing from Taurus, in terms of customization/modification potential.
And there are a number of other 9mm carbines on the market worth looking at. For under $300, a lot of people think the Hi-point is actually pretty good.
Even if they were a former factory, which I don't see with the lack of quality there, how they could be, the Italian's, still do it better, and make a more trustworthy piece.
To answer the more recent question, Taurus doesn't import the CT9 anymore. So far as I know, nobody in the USA has made high cap mags for this. I think this was a sort of "chicken and egg" problem.
Taurus couldn't import these legally with high cap mags. . .nobody would buy them without high cap mags. . .nobody bought these guns, so no domestic manufacturer bothered to tool up for high cap mags, and the gun was dropped from Taurus' import lineup.
Supposedly Colt high cap SMG mags will work. You won't get bolt hold-open but you might get function. See here:
It may be possible to modify Uzi mags to work too. I'm sure if you're clever with "tweaking" feed lips, filing catch-holes, and swapping out followers, you can probably rig up some sort of functional high cap.
quote:Originally posted by tsr1965
Even if they {Taurus} were a former factory, which I don't see with the lack of quality there, how they could be, the Italian's, still do it better, and make a more trustworthy piece.
Its a little more complicated than that. Taurus was its own company for decades before it had any involvement with Beretta. Taurus is also a conglomerate. . .it makes more than just guns, and it used to have different plants making guns.
The story with Taurus and Beretta is pretty simple. In typical Brazilian fashion, to get a military contract in Brazil, Beretta had to employ Brazilian labor and put a factory there. By the end of the 1970s, Beretta's military contracts were over, and Beretta then sold everything it had there. . .including tooling, manufacturing rights, and designs, to Taurus. Taurus then added the Beretta guns to its lineup (which already included revolvers and other guns made at different facilities).
That's why the OLDER Taurus autos like its small .22 auto and PT99 are clones of 1970s era Berettas. . . they're effectively Beretta guns built on Beretta tooling, by experienced Brazilian Beretta employees. Those early Taurus autos from the 1980s are probably as good as the Berettas of their day . . .in fact, in some ways they're better, because they used to come with beautiful (but now endangered and no longer importable) Brazilian rosewood stocks!
But that was 40 years ago. Taurus older Beretta-derived designs have evolved since, and its got quite a few original ones since then too. The Taurus REVOLVERS (which I think cause the most angst) were never derived from Beretta designs or tooling, but as I mentioned above two years ago, instead had some design featured borrowed (legally) from Smith and Wesson, whose former owner, at one time, also owned Taurus.
None of this has anything to do with these carbines. IIRC, the carbines in question are a sporterized version of a military/police gun that Taurus markets in Brazil (again, see above). Gun itself is supposedly pretty good. . .the biggest problem with it is the magazine issue, mentioned above.