Finally got a SIG!

There were a couple of years there where Sigs QA certainly slipped. That seems to be rectified since they did some restructuring and getting moved to the new facility.
I would disagree with the blaming QA. Not on the premise of QA slipping but I really think it is more of a certain individual restructuring towards lean manufacturing. Really it comes down to more or less two types of streamlining. Slowly cutting out the "fat" or using a cleaver.(take a guess the approach I think they took) Basically you remove unnecessary personnel or processes that aren't value added. Why do you think they came out with the E2 and switched from the short to the long extractor. With the E2 it is the same frame between the 40 and 9mm specifically the same magwell. Then the long extractor uses MIM to remove milling operations. I wouldn't buy anything new from SIG but would consider something they have been making for a while. The M11-A1 has been calling my name.
 
Great purchase. I can't wait to try the P227, didn't even know they had it out in FDE. Lube it properly, change the RSA every five years and that gun will last forever.
 
Congrats!

My P227 has been 100%. It's a great addition. I put a SRT and a "fat" trigger in it and it's great. A keeper for sure!
 
Sigs have a certain feel to them that has got my recent vote. It's a combination of weight, ergos, grip angle, control placement, balance, and of course, trigger feel.

After I shot my son's Sig with the SRT trigger, I was sold. Soon thereafter, I sold a couple Berettas and HKs, and added a 220, a 226, and a 229 to my arsenal - all Elites with the SRT trigger. They weren't cheap, but nothing worthwhile in life really is anymore. Worth every dime!

Congrats on your purchase and happy shooting!
 
change the RSA every five years and that gun will last forever.

Egh? That's not how it works.

Every 5,000 rounds is the recommended schedule. Some people shoot well over that in a year. Some people will never put that many rounds through a gun in its lifetime.
 
Last edited:
I would disagree with the blaming QA. Not on the premise of QA slipping but I really think it is more of a certain individual restructuring towards lean manufacturing. Really it comes down to more or less two types of streamlining. Slowly cutting out the "fat" or using a cleaver.(take a guess the approach I think they took) Basically you remove unnecessary personnel or processes that aren't value added. Why do you think they came out with the E2 and switched from the short to the long extractor. With the E2 it is the same frame between the 40 and 9mm specifically the same magwell. Then the long extractor uses MIM to remove milling operations. I wouldn't buy anything new from SIG but would consider something they have been making for a while. The M11-A1 has been calling my name.

I agree with everything said here. Sig has certainly had struggles with QC in recent times, and things may be improving (though I'm not sure about that), but that was never the core issue to my mind.

The real issue is that SIG Sauer Inc. under Cohen (not SIG Sauer GmbH) has gone full-bore on cheapening every possible component in their guns to extract the greatest amount of profit possible (cost savings are obviously not passed on to the consumer -- quite the contrary). The meat cleaver approach, as you say. Today's Sigs are loaded with MIM. Some of the third-party vendors they've sourced components from (e.g., IndoMIM) have produced embarrassingly low-quality MIM parts. Sig has also taken to shipping some proportion of their guns with low-quality Checkmate magazines for several years now. All of this while raising prices and adding all manner of bells and whistles that are irrelevant to quality. They're still good guns overall, but they don't compare to American Sigs from the 1990s (which were the equal of their German counterparts, in my opinion), and they're just not good values.

It's Cohen's Kimber playbook in action, basically, and it's kind of tragic to see for a long-time Sig fan. Trading on the company's hard-earned reputation in order to maximize profit to the greatest possible extent appears to work (for the goal of maximizing profit, that is), so I don't anticipate any change in direction. Kimber still moves a lot of guns following the same playbook.
 
It's Cohen's Kimber playbook in action, basically, and it's kind of tragic to see for a long-time Sig fan. Trading on the company's hard-earned reputation in order to maximize profit to the greatest possible extent appears to work (for the goal of maximizing profit, that is), so I don't anticipate any change in direction.
The real sad part is this is becoming the route that established American companies revitalize themselves. It isn't necessarily cheapening the product as much as giving the customer what they want with the minimum effort from the company, which however measured ultimately comes down to cost. Outsourcing for instance is a way of getting parts from someone that specializes in a manufacturing area. You get rid of equipment maintenance costs, personnel costs and they usually try to saddle the company they outsource to with a partial burden of the storage costs. Then on the actual materials they like to strip it down to "value added" but not beyond what it takes to do the job. At the place I used to work at it meant the cheapest material that did the job. For them cheaper meant thinner and they did that all the way down to where the machine ran like crap and the down time was costing them too much money. It also isn't limited to the product being made but extends beyond that to anything that costs them money like employee wages or services that isn't perceived as being beneficial.
 
I will happily put my 2012 P226 MK25 up against any other P226 model any category - fit, finish, durability, accuracy, trigger feel, etc.



I've been buying and shooting Sigs for close to 25 years, my Eckernforde built 226 made in '05 will embarrass anything made in Exeter that I've ever come across. Just my opinion of course. ;)
 
As far as I've experienced, round count is pretty much the defining characteristic of how 'sweet' a Sig is. What a wonderful thing, right? The more you shoot it, the better it is!

Sig brought on a new CEO, who standardized many of their practices, designs, and methods. Whenever you change over from proven to new manufacturing methods, there are QA/QC problems. That is the way of the world. I'd suggest that models built before major changes to the manufacturing process, and models built after the processes had been refined & finalized, have no real issues whatever, and are every bit the firearm that bears the Sig name.

West German pieces are a thing of incredible beauty & quality. If I had an infinite supply of money to be a collector of firearems, I'd consider grabbing a few, especially double proofed P228s. Wow. What handguns. But my 2009 Exeter, NH P229 doesn't seem to care where it was made: it just shoots and shoots and shoots and shoots.
 
Congrats to the OP. The P227 seems to be a nice gun! Enjoy it.

To those who are turning the OPs happiness about his new pistol into yet another old school vs new school Sigs... Start another thread.
 
Back
Top