Been curious about this for awhile now and finally ordered parts this morning--one Hyve for my 8rd mag and two MagGuts spring kits for both my 7 and 8 rounders.  The 7 rounder would stay in the gun in it's new 8+1 configuration and the Hyve mag would be carried as a back up in it's 11 round configuration.  Figure I can't be the first guinea pig on this one--looking for others experiences.  Both mags will get a thorough workout before being carried--update to follow once they arrive and I can get to the range.

In for your (hopefully better) results.

I installed the Hyves on two of my mags and both would fail to seat/engage the mag catch...no matter how hard you try to seat them even though visually they look OK.  I didn't have time to fiddle with them but my first guess is that they are metal and don't give any like the OEM plastic (or polymer or whatever) spacer.

Your post reminded me I need to e-mail them and see if it's a known issue and if there's a fix.

Well that has me a bit nervous--please do update when you hear back from Hyve I'm curious to see what they say.

I've been dicking around with the promag 10-rounder that came with my Shield [bought used]. The spring promag use is not very good, it uses more coils to achieve the same uncompressed length as a S&W 7/8 spring. Swapping in a S&W oem spring it will accept 11 rounds, follower locks the slide very positively. I have a magguts kit inbound and hope to make it 12 or even 13 rounds tomorrow.

I have 2 Hyve extensions (but no +1 plate) and both work fine in my pistol.

I've been running 2 of the HYVE +2 extensions for a while now and really like them.  I've had 0 issues with them with hundreds of rounds thought them.  I've actually had a couple of people go buy the HYVE extensions after using mine.

I've never thought about using the MagGuts with the HYVE's (I'm actually not really a fan of MagGuts) but I am interested in your long term report with your set up.

So I did a little digging last night and found a couple posts on Reddit with people using both the Hyve and MagGuts and them working together.  I also found a YouTube video and the person in the video stated they did NOT work together (and additionally I believe he even struggled to get 10 rounds in), but two comments on his video claimed they used them together just fine.  One thing among all of these is that each of these setups used the first generation of MagGuts that used two separate springs together rather than the newer 2.0 version that uses a single "zee-spring."  The ones I ordered were the newer 2.0's so we will see if there is any difference.  Hyve should be here Monday, MagGuts said 3-5 days to ship so hopefully everything can get here next week and I can hit the range at the end of the week or over the weekend.

Edit: Speak of the devil--just got a shipping e-mail from Corso Inc. about my MagGuts.  Three day shipping so they should be here Saturday/Monday along with the Hyve.



Just curious, why don't you like MagGuts?

I know a lot of people that had problems with their mags with MagGuts in them. I only know 1 person that still uses them. Everyone else I know that tried them, dumped them and went back to stock springs.

I know plenty of people out there use them just fine with no issues....  just personally seeing a lot of people with issues, I just don't trust them.

Would you happen to know if it was the older two spring version they had problems with?  Obviously reliability and consistency would be paramount before I'd consider carrying with them...it makes me wonder if the move to a single spring is to combat any previous issues.

Not positive.  I guess it depends on how long ago MagGuts changed springs.  I know some of them were probably between 1-2  years ago (maybe 3 years??) and 2 were within the last year.  So?

Well looks like USPS decided to be extra efficient--everything I had set for delivery Monday all showed up today.  Looks like I'll actually be able to hit the range on Monday instead and I'm looking to run 200-300 rounds of a mixture of FMJ and Federal HST/Speer Gold Dot JHP through each of the mags.  Installation for the most part wasn't terribly hard, though I had a couple issues with each.  For the z-spring MagGuts you want the end of the spring pointed to the back of the magazine...before you can put any tension it's already positioned so that it points more up than back which made the follower want to pop out vertically with the back pointed up.  The easiest way I found to get it together was to hold it with the follower against my chest to keep pressure across the front while I stuffed the spring inside the magazine body and slide the base plate on.  Once on you can see one full bend of the spring along the bottom of the follower--I had to use a small allen to fully seat the spring in the big mag once it was all together.  

When looking at the Hyve I felt like I had everything lined up properly and I fought it for a little, but eventually I tilted it very slightly so that it looked like it was angled too much downward toward the rails, but it slid on easily.  Both were compounded by the fact you could not use the easy method of compressing the spring some and sticking a small allen wrench through one of the round witness holes (I tried it once and the spring slid past and shot across the room).

The first time I loaded the magazines they were somewhat stiff though MagGuts states it takes a couple loads and unloads to fully seat the spring--once this is done they load up just fine and I can fit the full 8 rounds in my small mag and 11 rounds in the extended large mag.  They both will activate the slide lock when empty, so I have hopes they will do the same at the range and function flawlessly.  I'll update again with a range report Monday, but for now I am hopeful they will live up to expectations.  








I believe the change must have been VERY recent then since the YouTube video I saw was from around a month ago with the old springs--my guess it the change happened around the new year

I've been running the +2 Hyve extension on 2 of my Sheild 9mm mags. Not a single issue over the past 6-8 months. I run my spare IWB mag with the Hyve setup. Great product.

Are you running the MagGuts +1 spring as well or just the factory spring?

Range Report

Well that certainly felt like a marathon--I ended up shooting 200 rounds through each of the magazines.  I had another box of 100 I took thinking I'd shoot it, but I was growing tired of reloading the short mag in 8rd increments and I could tell I was getting fatigued and lazy and I did not want to enforce any bad habits that may have shown up had I continued.

The ammo I used today included Federal aluminum, Winchester white box, Remington brass, Federal HST 124gr +P, and Speer Gold Dot 124 +P

I wanted to get a wide variety of ammo so that I could ensure it would feed anything and everything I could throw at it.  During my testing I had four malfunctions with the 7rd magazine converted to 8rds with the MagGuts spring alone (to be referred to as "standard" from here forward) and one malfunction with the 8rd mag converted to 11rds with the Hyve extension and the MagGuts spring together (referred to as "Hyve").  That said, I am going to carry my Shield and keep the magazines the way they are and I'll explain why.

The malfunctions I experienced with the standard mag were 1 double feed that caused a FTE and 3 failures to lock the slide on empty.  The double feed/FTE happened on the second mag through the gun (ammo was WWB).  If I were to see any failures I expected them to come right at the start since MagGuts themselves say it takes a few loads and unloads to fully seat the spring.  Despite having loaded and unloaded in my house 4-5 times it is still nothing compared to them being subjected to the recoil impulse and actually being used.  I tried and tried to get it to give me another double feed, I mixed types of ammo, I loaded half full magazines or magazines with just two rounds, and I obviously shot numerous magazines that were loaded completely full.  After that one experience on the second mag it was flawless as far as feeding went.  Two of the slide locks happened to be when loaded with WWB, one of them was with a mixture of the Remington and Speer (last round would have been Speer).

The one malfunction I experienced with the Hyve mag was a single failure to lock the slide on empty when it was loaded with WWB.  Now it may look like the mags have a problem with the WWB, but I don't actually think that is the case--the problem is that I shot the aluminum and WWB first, then finished with a mixture of WWB/Rem/JHP, then exclusively JHP.  What I discovered part way through my shooting is that my thumb was riding the slide release keeping it down.  Once I made a conscious decision to ride my thumb along the back of my support thumb instead of "pinching" the frame with it I did not have a single malfunction of any sort.  At the end of the day I opened my spare box of WWB and shot a mag through each and did not have an issue when I kept my thumb out of the way.

My guess is that because the MagGuts are weaker springs to allow the extra round they cannot provide the same force to push back against the pressure my thumb has always been adding to the slide release like the stronger stock springs could.  That is also probably why I only had it happen once with the Hyve mag since I had more to grip onto I didn't feel the need to ride my thumb right up against the frame as firmly.  In the end once I realized what I was doing the magazines functioned flawlessly.  I believe part of the problem is that I've been shooting Glocks too much recently where I can get away with the thumb issue and it's just going to come down to the fact I need to train more with the Shield to get it corrected.

Obviously testing will continue as I go to the range more and more and I will be working to correct the thumb issue, but I am extremely satisfied that I can carry 20 rounds for my Shield in a very compact package.  At the end of the day the biggest issue I had was a failure to lock back on empty which I don't believe is a fault of the springs or extension themselves.  Should I encounter any issues in the future I will update this thread.