QFT!
Projects are fun
At this point, range time is cumbersome and difficult

@bradpierson26

Upon further evaluation, the A3 stock isn't AIDS. In fact, if you're all high speed low drag, it's really slick. Crazy compact - it trades a cheek weld for a cheek rest. But if comfort is your goal...get an A2. For the full size MP5 you're buying. Before March.

I'd say A2 > B&T long > B&T short > A3 for comfort. And the exact opposite order for transport or storage. I'm going to pick up an A2 and use all three. B&T short stock is the only one I can't get behind. Can't stand the ribs on the rear end of that thing.

I guess I didn't know there was a B&T long/short...
I had serious doubt about the A3 nature of my Manticore Arms slider stock for the Scorpion but the recoil is so low, it's not bad. The triangle stock on my AK is much worse.

I'll show my naïveté here - some A3 stocks seem to have a 1-2" rest, almost L shaped but some are just like a butt pad. Explain that to me. The L shaped ones look like you can just lean your head to the side and rest it vs like a nose to the charging handle AR shooting style. Thoughts?

I'm the high bidder on an MP5 on gunbroker right now.
Doesn't help that I dropped $19xx on an iMac for the Misus today

It looks like you got an "F" style A3 stock with your TPM build and that looks somewhat usable. I can't imagine any kind of cheek rest/weld with the "classic" A3 type stock.

And yes, I'm all for @bradpierson26 getting an MP5.

ETA: I also miss @GeneralPurpose 's garage floor.

If you're good with the Manticore slider, you'll probably be fine with the A3 stock. The two styles of A3 stocks are the original version and the later 'F' stock, which Engineer alluded to. I've never used an original A3 stock, but apparently the F is a huge improvement in comfort according to the internet.

Original:


F (my version):


The F stock "buttpad" portion isn't long enough to get my face down onto. My face is on the metal rails no matter what...but they are curved in section, so it's not completely horrible.

B&T Long (aka UMP style):


B&T Short:


You can see those stupid ribs on the back of the B&T short stock. They ruin that stock for me, but plenty of people like them. FYI, the B&T long and short stocks have versions for the full size guns and versions for the K guns. The adapter is different where it attaches to the gun. On the K, the B&T long stock is the exact same LOP as the Choate folder...so it's not all that "long."

Good luck on the Gunbroker auction! I feel you on the iMac - I'm building a computer this week with the proceeds from my first commission that I just finished. My pile of parts is slowly piling up around me from Newegg.

I miss my garage floor, too. That was a great spot for pictures.

I'm going to take pictures of my guns in the corridor of my apartment, it has a concrete floor. It won't get awkward unless the guy across the hall comes outside.

ETA: Corridor FTW!

Or it could get AWESOME.

TPM got my forms today! Picking it up Monday afternoon and going to the range. That seems like a good excuse to leave the office early!

Damn all you guys and these mp5's are making me envious. I planned to get an mp5k this month but that is on standstill now. I just lost 5th and 6th gear in my Cummins so that is eating into my toy fund at the moment. Looks like I will have to wait or get an mpx to hold me over.

Nice! Congrats, I know you have been waiting a long time for the SD!

Got the SD and the K out today, fired 330 rounds through the SD and 90 through the K. 1/3rd 115 grain, 1/3rd 124 grain, 1/3rd 147 grain. I thought 420 rounds would be enough for a range day, but I ran out of ammo and wanted to keep shooting. Today was great.

The SD is amazing. I love it even more than the K, which itself was my favorite gun to shoot until the SD. Not only is the SD as a gun just awesome to shoot - dead on accurate, incredibly low recoil, and smooth as butter - the TPM example seeps quality out of every pore. The receiver is flawlessly straight and square. The finish is the same as my MKE, but the gun looks much glossier than it actually is. It's just because of how straight and smooth the TPM is, making the gun more reflective.

The fit and finish on the TPM are unreal. My HK mags fit like they're welded to the gun, and my MKE mags wouldn't lock into place. I took it by TPM, and Ken explained that he fits it for HK mags, and if he did it for my MKE mags then the HK mags would have a slight wobble. I felt like it was worth it to be able to use the pile of MKE and POF mags that I have, so Ken took a jeweler's file to the inside of the magwell and took the tiniest amount of material off. All my mags fit now, and the HK mags have a fraction of a millimeter of wobble in the mag well. Wobble isn't even the right word, it's tolerance. The MKE mags in the SD fit like they're welded in place now. My MKE MP5K by comparison is laughable - mags of all kinds are loose as hell (which doesn't bother me - it doesn't impact functionality).

So TPM has stellar customer service, they're extremely cool guys, and the gun they build is flawless. I know other builders do great work as well, but this is a gun that I can't imagine being improved upon. Not only am I very glad I got an SD, I'm very glad I had TPM build it. With the MKE, I got my money's worth. With the TPM, I got my money's worth. They both work perfectly, but the quality truly is there with the TPM.

However, I've heard a lot of people say you don't need hearing protection with the SD. That was a big part of why I bought one, because I do need hearing protection with my K. Even with subsonic 147 grain. Five feet away from the gun? It's fine. But shooting it? No way. I have to say that I completely disagree with shooting the SD without hearing protection. It's still a centerfire gun - I tried one round without hearing protection and immediately could tell that was a bad idea. People who shoot without hearing protection probably say it's fine because they shoot without hearing protection (i.e. their ears are already damaged.) It's not something I would recommend doing, and I'll never do it again. But DAMN that is a quiet gun.

Surprisingly, 115 grain was the quietest, followed by a tie for second place between the 124 and 147 grain ammo. This is contrary to what I've heard others say, but everyone agreed 115 was the quietest both shooting and from 10 feet away. That's awesome in my book, that means I can keep buying cheap ammo. With the K, 147 grain was obviously the quietest because it's subsonic. The K seemed to have a slightly deeper tone than the SD as well - but they are both very, very quiet for a centerfire cartridge.

Fun fact: If you want to feel like 9mm has a lot of recoil, put several mags through an SD and then shoot a K. The K kicks three times as hard as the SD shooting the same ammo - the SD is just that low recoiling. Also, I did almost all of the shooting with the A3 stock on the SD. It's ergonomically...different...but in a way that makes me really appreciate its idiosyncrasies. The B&T is better, it's a more traditional stock. But there's something really fun about the A3. I like it, and I'm glad I have both. I think the A3 will stay on most of the time. It actually has better ergonomics than the old school Choate stock on the K.

TL;DR: The SD is awesome. TPM is awesome. Shooting stuff is fun.



ETA: The rubber handguard does an excellent job of protecting you from the heat. I got the gun hot as hell, and it took quite a while before the handguard got very hot. It's actually easier to shoot than the K, since you can easily get your hand against a hot part of the receiver between the grip and magwell on the K.

Interesting. Is your suppressed K with subsonics quieter than your SD? Do you wear hearing protection with your K?

Great write up.

Very nice writeup. Have you tried different locking pieces with your K?

I too wear hearing protection with my SD but I wear hearing protection for most everything except rimfire rifle.

Too bad you aren't closer - then we could compare the TPM can and the Curtis Tactical can.

And everyone says the SD is a one-trick pony. "Why spend all that money for a .380?" Bla bla bla... yet once you own one and shoot it, you'll understand

Thanks. The SD is definitely quieter. I think the K has a slightly lower tone right now because it has a steel silencer that's already nicely fouled, while the SD's aluminum silencer was brand new. Once it gets some carbon on the baffles, the perceived pitch should come down a lttle. When I was shooting the SD, nobody around me felt the need to put on hearing protection, but with the K they put it on.



Thanks. I tried an 80 degree with the K when it was new, and it wouldn't cycle with it installed. I use a 100 degree right now, and that's worked great. Now that the gun is broken in, I may try the 80 again. Suppressed, rimfire rifle and unsuppressed CB shorts from a rifle are the only things I shoot without ears.

I would love to hear the Curtis Tactical can - and I'm not against getting a steel can for my SD eventually so I can swap between the two.



Exactly.

Purchased 2016-04-15
Form 4s mailed 2016-04-22
Checks cashed 2016-04-27
Approved 2016-12-10 (both forms)
Received 2017-02-17 (finally!)
Picked up 2017-02-20

I brought it home today intending to immediately go to the range, did a quick function check and...... mags don't lock in. Not the HK mag that's included, not any of my MKE mags I tried. Back to TPM. Ken grabs one of his HK mags and it fits perfectly, but my new-in-wrapper HK mag doesn't. Weird. A few minutes with a file and all is well. Unfortunately by then it was too late to go to the range so I'll have to wait until Sunday. Very annoying but after waiting since April a few more days is no bigs.

Anyway, here's the family:



Ti Rant 9 on the full size, Griffin Revolution 45 on the K. Normally I use just use the Revo with whichever one I take to the range but obviously for this picture I need a can on both

Beautiful trio. Congrats!

Glad it went well GP, sounds like you made a good choice in the TPM. How does the inside look after 330 rounds?

I'm jealous that you guys have that kind of service locally. Makes it an absolute no brainer to go with TPM.

This x3

TPM SD Upper Receivers @TFB

I'm not sure I would have bought a hand-built potentially finicky gun like this if they weren't local. Being able to go to their shop, talk to Matt and Ken for a couple hours, see all the in-progress builds, ask questions, and knowing that they are close by in case anything goes wrong alleviated all of my concerns.

That looks nice but it seems there's quite a premium for just an SD upper. Just throwing out numbers (and someone correct me if I'm wrong) but an ambi lower runs around $400 for a mix and $700 for an all German pack, an A3 F-stock runs around $200, an HK straight mag is $50 and the TPM suppressor is $600. So you're losing about $1350 worth of parts with a retail price difference of only $1000 between the full P5SD A3 with suppressor vs. just the upper.

Yup. I think the draw is no wait, but again, you have to already have an SD can.

Hahaha, I'm already scheming how much plasma I need to sell to get $2800 or how many diapers I can make my daughter reuse and save up the money that way.

I look forward to finding that out as well, but it'll be a couple days before I have time to take it down for cleaning. I'll let you guys know.

I also need to put together a battery terminal cleaning brush, which I should've done in the last ten months since I bought the gun...

I built the tool described here in this thread

Yeah I'm gonna stop by a hardware store tomorrow to get the spanner needed to take apart the can and the PVC supplies to make that DIY port brush.

Well I couldn't wait for Sunday after all, so I left work early today and took the SD to the range. I brought 150 rounds of Blazer Brass and 150 rounds of Federal, all 115 grain. Here's what happened:

Things started off badly. In the first 50 or so rounds there were exactly 3 rounds that functioned correctly. All others failed to eject properly. I was expecting the occasional malfunction with the wimpy ammo but this was a little ridiculous. I thought maybe it just needed to be broken in a little so I stuck with it. After about 50 rounds I got a few strings of 4 or 5 rounds that cycled properly, and eventually after maybe 150 rounds it started to work for all the ammo I put in the mag most of the time. But sometimes it would just start to malfunction again. In general the Blazer Brass seemed to work a little better than the Federal.

Eventually I got down to the last box of each type, I loaded up a full 30 round mag of Blazer and shot it all without issue then I loaded the remaining 20 and that went fine, too. Then I loaded 30 rounds of Federal in one mag and the remaining 20 in another. The 30 rounds worked fine, I put in the mag with 20 rounds in it and it was malfunction every single round. I stopped after 4 or 5 rounds and unloaded that mag and put the rest of the ammo in the first mag and it all worked fine. Hmmmm. I didn't have any more ammo to investigate further but it made me suspicious. Interestingly, the potentially bad mag was the HK one.

As I was waiting for it to cool down to pack up, I noticed the end cap had started unscrewing itself and when I went to screw it back on I noticed that the tube had started unscrewing from the base. Great. No end cap strikes or anything but now I will never be able to trust it to keep itself together. I screwed the tube back on, and took the end cap off and shook out some debris, when I screwed it back on it wouldn't go back all the way. I wasn't able to find the rear cap spanner locally (Ken said he found his at Ace Hardware but I couldn't find one there and when I described it to the salesman he looked at me like I had just told him I was from Neptune) so I ordered one online, when it gets here I'll take the can apart to clean it and hopefully straighten out whatever little gap crept in between the baffles or spacers keeping the end cap from going on all the way. There's no real way to properly torque the end cap, I might try Loctite or something.

When I got home I took stripped the gun and checked everything out and did a quick cleaning. I built the barrel cleaning brush thing easily enough and scrubbed off the ports, they weren't too dirty anyway. When I was wiping off the mags I noticed that the feed lips were worn down clear through the finish and had a mirror polish on the bare metal. I think instead of breaking in the gun I was breaking in the mags. The HK mag causing problems was not nearly as worn down as the two MKE mags I was also using. It could be that the mags are jammed in so tightly that the bolt carrier is dragging and getting hung up. To test this theory I held the upper vertically with the muzzle down and dropped the bolt carrier down from the back of the receiver. Without a mag in it drops in perfectly and closes the bolt just fine, but with a mag inserted it stops dead before the bolt closes. I did the same experiment with my MKE full size and with or without the mag the bolt closes happily. Not 100% conclusive but it's some evidence.

I will out of town this weekend and all of next week, when I get back I'll talk to TPM again and see what they think. I'm even more glad they are local now; it would be extremely frustrating to have already sent the gun back to address my previous mag locking in issue then to discover that the gun doesn't work right when I got it back.

As far as the sound goes, I very unfortunately agree with GP's report that it is not comfortable to shoot without hearing protection. It is noticeably louder than my MKEs with muzzle cans shooting 147 grain ammo (specifically the "chubbies" from Stand 1 Armory). I shoot my MKEs with Revo 45 without hearing protection and both the full size and K are perfectly comfortable and everybody that I've let shoot them agrees. I will admit that I shoot the full size far more than the K so my memory of the K sound might be off but I don't use ear plugs when shooting it. I would like to try other ammunition and see if 124 grain or a different 115 grain load is quieter. It is disappointing and I hope that I can find different ammo that is quieter. I also noticed that the gun comes with a 120 degree locking piece so perhaps a 115 degree piece will help.

Another observation - this gun gets incredibly dirty. I knew that going in but goddamn, people are not exaggerating. There was a little blowback, not much but occasionally I felt a little.

I'll post some pictures when I get back, I have an early flight tomorrow and I need to start packing.

Well that sucks.

How tight are the mags in the gun? Does the mag catch fully retract when the mags area inserted, or is it sticking out slightly?

The area Ken filed down on my gun was where the two nubs on the back of the mag hit.

Mags are rock solid tight, no wobble at all. The mag catch sticks out slightly with a mag inserted, and equally with MKE and the HK mag. Without a mag it is flush.

Yeah same area, on the inside of the mag well. I think the problem might be that the mag catch is slightly too high (too close to the barrel) so it is holding the mags a little closer to the bolt carrier than it should. This would also explain why mags couldn't seat properly before. After filing down the mag well they can now lock in, but they're still too far into the receiver.

Interesting. I was/am debating an MP5SD vs MP5K clone. If I had to guess I would think the MP5SD would be the quietest out of the bunch. My experience below:

1) MP5 with AAC Evo or Griffin Revo9 shooting 147 grain freedom or 147 grain lawman is very quiet and comfortable to shoot in an open area. In a concrete bay, it can be a little loud due to the sound amplifying on the wall, but in the open its very quiet

2) My Sig MPX cut down to 4.5 with the Revo9 under the handguards (MP5SD look...) is VERY comfortable and I don't get over gassed or blow back that a lot of people describe with the MPX and its gas system. Shooting super sonics through it and youll get some, but not a lot. I shoot sub sonics exclusively for everything so it isn't an issue for me

3) My 8.5 inch .300 BLK using 220 grain subs and a Saker 762 wasn't as quiet as I was hoping for. I find it slightly uncomfortable and wonder if an adjustable gas block would make it quieter at the ear (its worked on my 5.56 guns). I know people equate the .300 BLK to "replacing" the MP5SD and wonder if the sound is comparible

I hope you solve your problem with the SD. I know roller locks can be weird, as I had nothing but problem with my MP5 until I simply replaced the extractor and extractor spring... before, I couldn't get through a mag without a malfunction, and after the fix I cant remember if its ever even jammed since then in thousands of rounds.

Shoot 124 or 147 through it and get back to us about sound. Not really apples-to-apples comparing your muzzle-can with subs, to an SD with 115s.

Not trying to be confrontational, but isn't the appeal of the SD that it drops 115 ball down to subsonic speeds? If you put 124/147 through it, the velocity drop would be like making a comparison between CCI Standard Velocity and Quiet.

On a separate but related note, I need to chrono my SD setup but has anybody chronoed their TPM SD to see what velocity 115 is coming out at?

HK designed it around 124gr ammo. I run 115 in mine because I'm cheap, and don't want to stack 2 different types of 9mm for my MP5s. Also, as the can gets dirty it will get quieter, so it may be that it's a brand new suppressor.

ETA: .. AAAND I just ordered 1,000rds of Speer 124gr to try out.

Oopsie - let me go wipe that egg off my face.

I should look at my 115 loads and see if they need any adjusting. I don't really want to add 124gr bullets to my 9mm load recipes.

Could be that I have never shot mine indoors. I belong to an outdoor range. I imagine an indoor range with partitions between lanes would be louder. Also, as I said it's a new can. New/clean cans always seem louder to me.

I can chrono 115, 124, and 147 next time I shoot. 147 out of the SD is slow, around 700-800 fps.

For me, the merits of the full size vs. K vs. SD lies more in what the gun is like to shoot (recoil characteristics and balance) than which is the quietest or most lethal...but that's because all three are very similar, and I'm shooting at things that don't shoot back.

I'm with you guys in spirit!

needs ports

Curtis Tactical said he would do it for me but then I'd have to recore my can to accommodate it. I didn't want to turn one of my cans into a one trick pony.

D3 LLC makes a ported 9mm AR barrel and suppressor combo that looks pretty nifty. But again that's some serious coin to be stuck with one configuration. That's always been my hold up on a MP5SD and why I'm such a huge AR fan. Versatility.

Eventually you just end up with enough that versatility doesn't matter

I'm getting there but not quite yet.

The nice thing about H&K is that the cost of entry is so high that two stamps and a dedicated suppressor are but a mere pittance when compared to the cost of the gun, parts and accessories.

I have more money invested in MP5 mags than some of these guys have in their MP5SDs