I bought an Ultra Aegis II awhile back (new from LGS). It came with 1 mag, so I overpaid for 4 factory mags which have never been awesome.

I recently bought Wilson Combat 9mm 1911 mags - HOL E FK these are unmatched!!

Why are factory mags so bad?? Or why is Bill so good at making mags?

Most pistol manufacturers don't make their own mags, doing so requires machinery for stamping and folding sheet metal and welding them so it's a lot simpler to have Mecgar or somebody else make magazines to the manufacturer's design and specifications.
I think Wilson does make their own magazines to their own design that simply fit and work better than the rest of the secondary market 1911 magazines. Don't know if he started with the official 1911 govt Browning design or what, but they make the best 1911 magazines.

Wc redesigned and modernized the 1911 mag to reach potential
Most oem mags are just your rubber stamped old styles …worked great with std 1911 but as those got more picky…

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Most modern 1911 shooters don’t understand the differences in mag lip design, the reasons for those differences, how they impact the feed cycle with different bullet types, and how the extractor angles fits into the process.

There are four basic magazine types:

The original GI “tapered lip” or “hard ball” magazine.

These magazines have long feed lips with a constant taper the full length of the magazine. They were designed for the original 200 gr round nose FMJ and the ultimately adopted 230 gr round nose FMJ.  

If you make up a dummy round (with no primer) remove the recoil spring from an unmolested 1911, put it back together and then hand cycle the round out of the magazine and into the chamber you’ll discover it’s glides like a well oiled sewing machine.  

The long tapered feed lips fully control the round and allow the base of the round to rise as the nose of the bullet contacts the feed ramp and starts to rise into the chamber.  It’s an example of the simple looking yet deceptively complex engineering that John Browning was famous for.

However, if you take a shorter round nose flat point or a hollow point, the base of the bullet rises a bit too much before the shorter bullet contacts the feed ramp and starts to rise.  That can result in the bullet getting driven into the feed ramp at too flat an angle and coming to a dead stop.

With a short 185 gr semi wadcutter stoppages due to it hitting the feed ramp at too flat an angle are common.


The Colt “Commercial” or “Hybrid” semi-tapered feed lips.

Around 1930 as other alternatives to 230 gr FMJ became more common, Colt created a hybrid magazine lip design that held the base of the bullet down a little longer to allow a shorter bullet (either a flat point, hollow point, or longer semi wad cutter, and or lighter bullet with a shorter OAL) to contact the feed ramp and start to rise before the base of the bullet started to rise.  This prevented the round from jamming on the feed ramp.  

This feed lip design kept bullseye shooters using semi wad cutters that cut full diameter holes happy.  The wad cutters of that era used fairly long noses, like the classic Henley and Gibbs # 68 design.  

However, the hybrid lip design still allowed the longer 230 gr FMJ to feed reliably.  The later starting and shorter overall length feed lip releases the base of the case completely before the feed angle gets too steep. It feeds reliably, just not as smoothly and without the fully controlled feed it gets with a GI magazine.


The parallel lip “wadcutter” magazine.

The parallel lip magazine came along with practical pistol shooters who started using lighter weight semi wadcutters to reduce recoil that had shorter noses resulting in shorter OALs.

The wadcutter magazines use parallel lips that keep the base down longer and then release the bullet not long after it starts up the  feed ramp, giving up even more controlled feed, creating a steep feed angle, but still shallow enough to feed the short rounds.

However, the steep feed angle requires the extractor profile to be modified so that the rim doesn’t bind between the extractor and the bolt face.  When the rim binds between the two it’s common for the slide to stop about 1/8” out of battery.   Shooters will think the spring is weak etc and switch to a more powerful spring to try to drive it home, but that’s not the cause of the problem and isn’t a reliable fix.

230 gr FMJ rounds are generally not reliable in the wad cutter magazine as the long bullet and sharp feed angle combine to jam the bullet into the underside of hood of the slide just behind the barrel.  The resulting three point jam is a real bear to clear and requires dropping the magazine out of the magazine well.

It’s not, as someone above suggested,  that “1911s got picky” it’s that  some of the newer bullet designs became a lot shorter.  



The Wilson 47D magazine.
The Wilson magazines give up all control of the round and just pop it straight up in front of the side face so the slide can bat it into the chamber.


It’s not that Wilson discovered some profound truth JMB didn’t it, it’s that he found a kludge that would work for most point styles and length in most 1911s by basically converting the 1911 to a totally uncontrolled push feed design. And it works as long as the extractor can snap over the rim.  And if it does, it will keep doing it, at least until the extractor eventually breaks.  There is a reason Wilson extractors “will hold tension longer and resist damage better than any other extractor on the market”.  With 47D magazines they have to be able to take abuse.


Wilson sells a lot of magazines (and replacement extractors) and mostly ignorant (of the ways of the 1911 and it’s engineering) shooters don’t have to understand what magazines they should be using with odd bullet types.


That said, unless something else is wrong, for a 1911 using standard bullet weights and nothing too far out of the norm, the Colt Commercial feed lip design, the design used by every major manufacturer, works just fine.  

I'm unsure if you are an exceptional plagiarizer or if you write on this topic for a living 😁. If not the latter, then you should.

Seriously, thanks for the great info.

Thanks for the info. Very detailed.
I have been wondering about this as well

Follow up: if the solution is round-push-feed (loading), then why does the extractor (unloading) matter?

Someone can expand on this, but the extractor plays a role in feeding the round.  The case rim slides up behind the extractor hook as the round is pushed forward and upward from the magazine.  If it's too tight the round can hang on the extractor and bind, stopping the round from feeding.  I'm not sure that too much clearance on the hook will cause feeding issues.  I'd welcome a better explanation from someone with a deeper understanding myself.

I believe the problem is the 1911 extractor isn't spring loaded (Sig or Glock for example) its a solid piece of steel that "flexes".
Making the extractor hook jump the rim (push feed), flexes/works the extractor further than designed and can make it weak and eventually fail the extract. Some say the extractor hook can chip from jumping over the rim of the case, possibly, especially if steel case ammo was used.

With newer metals and treatments this may not be as much of a problem with newer designed extractors??