Christensen Arms: High-End Prices and Low-End Quality

T

Theohazard

New member
How in the world are these guys considered a high-end gun company? Sure, they use titanium and carbon fiber, but their build quality is terrible. Take their 1911s; they use some high-end materials and they're priced up there with semi-custom stuff from guys like Wilson Combat, but they also use MIM parts and their build quality is worse than a $700 Remington R1.

And their rifles are the same way; I've never picked up a Christensen AR-15 that didn't have some small thing wrong with it, whether it's a dust cover that won't close or a mis-aligned handguard.

Our shop made the mistake of trying to stock Christensen guns, but to date we've had to send back four of them due to defects after the customer had problems. We ended up sending back our entire inventory to them for a refund after we found other issues with their guns. It's pretty amazing to me that they're considered by many to be a high-end gun maker.
 
Ya, they are not what they're touting themselves to be. They are only a few miles from me, I know a guy who works for them and the gun side of the business is not there for anything other than taxes, their other ventures are where the money comes from for them. They do not have a good reputation locally.
 
That makes sense. Sometimes I'm amazed at what makes it out of the factory there, and this helps explain it better.

Even their catalog has bad quality control issues. They had a bunch of beautiful close-ups of their guns, but you could see flaws in them. One picture had a 1911 with a heavily-worn front sight and what looked like an un-even barrel crown. On another there were scratches on the barrel hood. And on most of the 1911 pics you could see the MIM line on the mag release. And on the ARs you could see what's even more obvious in person: The un-even shims that separate the carbon fiber on the barrel from the muzzle brake.

Heck, they can't even put out a catalog without quality control issues in the pictures.
 
Tried to buy one of their AR15 carbon fiber barrels for a project gun....they quoted me a price of $1300-to-$1500. Still like the light weight and strength concept, but that's a little too steep for my tastes.
 
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