Got a table for this years NRA banquet dinner that is this coming Saturday & the platinum package comes with a Kimber Micro 9.

I know Kimber has a bad name here on ARForm.

A few years ago at a NRA dinner I won a Kimber 1911 & it has run fine.

Anybody have any experience with the Micro?

I have 3 Micro .380's I really like. I'll probably never get the 9mm because it's just a little too big for pocket carry fro me. The only downside to Kimber is their CS is quite lacking. They will fix problems, but they take a while. I figured out how to make mine run 100% or I would have ditched them.

Happy with my 380, runs fine on Brown Bear, Spanish surp JHP, and it loves Gecco.

Not so much a bad name but more their hit or miss quality.  Or my biggest peeve about this is having to work on the pistol to make a brand new gun work.  Neighbor his wife used to own one but got rid of it because she got a miss.  She now has the same pistol as her husband a G43.

You lost me at that point. Especially because you are talking about 3 Kimber .380s. It sounds like they all needed tweaking to get them to run right.

When I buy a new gun I do a basic field strip and do a quick wipe down and clean. I lube it. I take it to the range. If the gun shows any sign of a recurring issue (jams, FTF, FTE, etc), it is GONE the next day. No reflection, no tinkering, it is just gone. I am even at the point where if it does not work flawlessly on the first outing...it is gone. I understand ALL manufacturers put out a lemon sometimes. That's why if I have a gun I'm really interested in, and it fails on the first outing, I will buy a second one and give it another chance.

From my many years of reading these forums, and having purchased a couple of Kimber's myself, their Lemon rate is way too high! Especially their tiny little 9's and .380s. They seem very hit or miss, even more miss than hit.

You have to consider the source.

All three of my Kimbers have been high quality pistols that have performed flawlessly.   I've got a high round count Gold Match II as well as an Ultra Carry that I carried daily for about 10 years and it's got about 20,000 rounds through it.  It's still reliable.

I've only had my Kimber Micro for about a year, but it's seen about 1000 rounds through it and it's been absolutely flawless in terms of reliability.   That includes both Remington 102 gr Golden Saber and Hornady 90 gr XTP self defense loads.    

It's not as accurate as a fixed barrel .380 ACP like the Walther PP, PPK or PPK/S, but it's a lot lighter and has less perceived recoil due to locked breech design.

Here's my Kimber Micro about 200 round s dirty on it's first range session with zero malfunctions. Unlike other Kimbers, my Micro didn't need a break in period to reach 100% reliability.



I prefer night sights on my concealed carry handguns and while they are not standard on the Micro, they are not hard to install if you have a sight pusher and a small file to fit the sights to the dovetails.  Price wise, the Micro with night sights ends up being identical to the Sig P238, which comes with night sights as standard.

I'm not a fan of the Micro 9 (or Sig P938) as it's a bit too small and light to shoot regularly and accurately with a 9mm self defense load or equivalent practice load.

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In my observation and experience, Kimbers often get a bad name here because of operator error or ignorance.

It's all to uncommon for someone to buy one then immediately post ask what kind of "upgrades" he should get.   The hero of his own post then proceeds to change the springs and magazine and then often does something really stupid like putting in a recoil buffer - more or less in keeping with the practice with adult Lego AR-15 and 10/22 fashion.  The problem is that this really screws with the engineering, particularly on the commander and officer frame sized pistols, where slide over run is already reduced, and where a heavier or lighter recoil spring and/or a recoil buffer will screw with the slide over run time and create a feed problem.

The other issue is that Kimber pistols tend to be tightly fitted and it takes a couple hundred rounds to break one in.  If the shooter above actually shot it first before deciding it needed "upgraded", the odds ar ehe did not shoot it enough to break it in before passing judgement on it.

Another problem is that most Kimber pistols use the Schwartz firing pin safety system which is actuated by the grip safety. This means that when a 1911 user decides to re-assemble a Kimber 1911 by holding the frame by the grip and then ramming the slide home he is in effect depressing the grip safety and raising the stud that actuates the firing pin safety into the path of the slide.   The study effectively stops the slide, so out intrepid hero thus back sup and whacks it even harder, eventually creating enough leverage on the stud to press the grip safety outward.  These are the idiots who then complain that the Schwarz system is fragile and prone to breaking - being totally ignorant of the fact that by not properly assembling the slide to the frame (by not depressing the grip safety) the breakage is idiot/user induced.  In other words they don't read the manual; or understand the system but they go on line and bash Kimber's engineering  - apparently because it wasn't sufficiently idiot proof to prevent them from breaking it.

A final problem with Kimber pistols is that they make an awful lot of 1911s and sadly, fewer and fewer 1911 shooters these days understand the significance of magazine feed lips and the interplay between point shapes, feed lip design and and extractor profile in the 1911 - with the result that they mis match magazines and point shapes and change extractor profiles with out having a clue what they are doing. But of course they blame Kimber because it's  fairly expensive 1911 that doesn't get a pass like an RIA does when the user screws it up.

Thanks guys, the dinner is tonight & I think we can pick the pistols/rifles & all the winnings tomorrow, if so I'll test it out with 500-600 hundred rounds or more depending on how it goes.

I'll report back.

I used to carry Kimbers. I no longer do, but mine were 100 percent the years I owned them.

Most of my extended family carry and use Kimbers. No complaints from them, either.

Not saying Kimber doesn't ever put out a lemon, but they are far from the horror show that the internet would have you believe.......