I'd say they are of 'average' quality for production 1911's (ie. most will be okay, a few might need to go back for warranty work).
I have a P14. It did have a minor problem out of the box. The trigger would not return sometime, after firing! Something must have been bent out of spec, maybe binding against the magazine. Anyway, it was fixed under warranty.
Mine also shot really high. I mean really high. At 25 yd., it shot over the bullseye. At 50 yd. it shot near or over the top of the target backer! This was reported when I sent it back for the trigger problem. The local warranty station simply noted on the work order: testfire at 10 yd., within spec, and did nothing else.
I ended up filing down the rear sight to lower the point of impact. Interestingly, I talked to a fellow competitor at the club who had a P13 of the same vintage and his shot high as well. And he had to file down his rear sight. Don't know if that was just a bad batch of sights from the period (several years back). So can't say if it was an isolated problem or not.
Accuracy is excellent. Better than most of my stock Colts.
My steel-frame version is _very_ controllable. Probably the best feature. 14 or 15 + 1 capacity, mild recoil, good accuracy.
I have no feeding problems with the mags I have. Although I have heard the weak link with ParaOrds are the factory mags. Apparently, the pre-bans were being cranked out so fast before the ban cutoff, that the mag quality varies from okay to so, so... Some feeding problems can be traced to bad mags. They are supposed to be tuneable however. Cylinder and Slide will tune your mags as part of their ParaOrd reliabilty tune-up package. So the out-of-spec ones can be tweaked/tuned to work right...
As to hi-cap mags prices, after the Fed ban, they jumped up from $44 to over $100 each for 14 or 15 rd. mags. While no longer available in Kalif., if you find factory mags under $100, that's probably a decent price.
You might want to get a few Mec-Gar 10 rd. mags mailordered for $25 - 30 each instead, at least for range use. That's a lot of money for 3, 4, or 5 extra rounds. ParaOrd's factory post-ban P14 10 rd. mags are still in the $40 range, which is a might high, imho... While I haven't tried the MecGar P14 mags yet, generally, I've had pretty good luck with their double-stack mags in my Berettas and SIGs.
Some parts are interchangeable with 1911's, but not all. Slide lock lever, thumb safety, grip safety, maybe hammer, sear, springs and the like too... Best double check though..
