Beretta 92 S. African Mags???

J

JohnKSa

Administrator
I just saw an ad for some new hicap mags that are described as Beretta South African Contract Magazines.

Does anyone have any information on these mags? The price is decent, but not so low as to be scary--still, it would be nice to know a little something about them.

Thanks
 
Caveat Emptor

If the price is too good to pass up, buy them. If you need to tweak them a little to make them reliable just make the tweaked ones range magazines. If they are more than 30$ I'd pass because you can find American and Italian 15 round magazines around 30-40$.
 
If they are advertised as Vektor magazines (probably out of D.S. Arms in 'Shotgun News'), they were made for the Vektor SP1 and Z88 pistols (you can see them at http://www.vektorusa.com) used by South African police and the military forces. The Z88 is a near exact clone of the Beretta 92, and the SP1 frame is made from the same blanks as the Z88, though it has a different safety.
From what I had read in a Peter Kokalis article about 9 years ago, the magazines are of better quality than Beretta mags, and in an American Rifleman article (Dope Bag) two years reviewing the SP1, the writers said the the SP1 would accept and function with aftermarket Beretta 92 mags. I would think that the converse of this is true (Berettas accepting SP1/Z88 mags), and I bought 4 of them when they were more than 30 dollars. If D.S. Arms still has them, I might buy 2 more.
Overall they look like Beretta mags, and the condition that mine were in was excellent or better (I think they were refinished/refurbished, and had seen little use beforehand), and they seem to be a little heavier than the the factory Beretta magazines. they also have thicker magazine bases that will not fit in the factory carry case that Berettas come in. Hope this info helps.
 
It turned out that they were indeed Vektor mags.

They were billed as new--and they probably were unused, but they were shipped loose and showed shipping marks. Particularly on the painted aluminum baseplates.

The mag bodies are very high quality, heavier gauge than the factory Berettas and they appear to be case hardened. The blued finish seems very durable--especially compared to the parkerizing on the Beretta factory mags.

I purchased 10 of the mags and spend about 1/2 an hour swapping baseplates and followers around until I got all the mags where they would seat and latch and lock the slide open on empty.

I ended up having to open up the mag catch latch on one of the mags with a needle file--not as easy as it sounds because of the case hardening.

Since then, I have experienced no failures of any kind shooting various kinds of ammunition.

The biggest negative I see is that because of the heavier gauge steel in the mag bodies some of them won't accept Beretta baseplates. That's not even a big issue since the baseplates that came on the mags seem to be quite durable--other than the chipping paint...
 
JohnKSa, I find them pretty good too. I bought two of them to test them out, and was impressed. I've had no ftf or lockback problems with them. I have four more on order in fact.

Supposedly, if DSA Arms is to be believed, they are manufactured under license from Beretta, and one would hope they make at least a modest effort to monitor people holding licenses. This seems to be a pretty good product at a pretty good price, as far as I've been able to tell.
 
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