Quoted:
are you talking about NEW DETONICS?
or older models

I dont known anything about the NEW detonics, other than Jerry Ahern is/was the owner..

I do know the older ones,,EARLY MODELS were fine weapons, I carried one of 27 years and regret selling it time and again, it went bang every time and hit where it was pointed.
but
some made later in the companies history were not so good...relibility issues, spring issues, feed ramp issues etc..all easy fixes for a good smith to clean up but,,at the time 500 for a gun, then 100 to the gun smith was alot of money to fix an already expensive NEW gun

the NEW ones, I have heard mixed reviews but no commitment either way..

but over all I LOVED detonics for some reason

Quoted:
I have been a compact CCW carrier for years now. The 5" which fits like a glove in an OWB duty holster just doesn't work for me IWB given the myriad of choices out there. That leaves the Commander, which carries well for me but has the same grip profile as the 5" and the compact/subcompacts. I tried the 3.5" "officer" series and was bitterly disappointed with respect to two areas. The platform reliability (read: the difficulty of getting this platform to run with the slipshod practices of production companies makes it a reliability gamble with many outfits) and the shooting performance left everything to be desired. If it wasn't for the amazing concealment properties and timing I may have given up alltogether and stuck with Commanders. I was determined to make this platform work and the recipe for that came in the form of the CQB Compact from Wilson Combat. This pistol achieves all three aspects of the CCW 1911: truly concealable and comfortable carry, reliable, and very controllable for the platform. Of course the cost for having everything is paying for everything and many consider a semi-custom CCW prohibitively expensive (which I thing is a great disservice to oneself).

Kimber and (I believe springfield) makes a "Compact", 4" bull barrel mounted over the compact/officer frame. This is what the CQB Compact is and the platform handles and conceals wonderfully. The drawback is that it is more difficult to make a reliable example than a 5" full size and I wouldn't trust my life to some of those companies on a 5", much less a 4". If you are wanting a <4.25" gun and want to gamble on production reliability, this is the platform to consider.

If you want reliability at production prices, Colt seems to provide it rather consistently. Other companies offer "subcompact/micros", but I would stay away from them as you may have even bigger reliability issues than those associated with their larger 4" offerings. Colt has offered three <4.25" models, including the venerable "officer" (3.5" mounted on the compact frame), the Defender, and the New Agent (both 3" mounted over the compact frame). While their reliability is more trustworthy than most outfits, their performance is rather lackluster by comparison. The smaller platforms make followup shots considerably slower and doubletaps a real struggle by comparison to larger 1911s, without giving any considerable advantage in concealment or carry to the 4" compact platform. This is not to say they are unmanagable or one cannot overcome the difficulty with more training, but it is the disadvantage of the platform and IMO a significant enough one to avoid on a primary in lieu of the options available.

If you want reliability and performance at a slight compromise to size you also have the "CCO" platform made popular by Colt, (who unfortunately discontinued it). This was the 4.25" top end mounted over a compact frame, giving you the control/performance of the beefier Commander with the grip profile of the Officer, and is considered by some to be the best of both worlds. The obvious problem in the production class is that Colt no longer makes it, which puts the buyer in the awkward position of paying a premium for a sought-after Colt on the used market, building/having the CCO built with quality parts from Caspian, Fusion, etc., or buying a POS from Para.

So these are the 4 options as I know them: Cost + Concealment + Performance - Reliability (Production "compact"), Reliability + Cost + Concealment - Performance (Colt <4" guns), Reliability + Cost + Performance - Concealment (Colt Commander/CCO), or Reliability, + Concealment + Performance - Cost (Semi-custom Compact).  I can't say much about Detonics from personal experience. They seem to be somewhat interesting, but I am not a fan of their sights or their hammer design.

Quoted:
For me, wheelguns (beyond D frame Colts, Ruger SP-101s, and J frame S&Ws) are out of the question for CCW in warm weather, not to mention the ammunition and reload speed drawbacks.

Like I said, If you have the money and love the platform, the CQB Compact is unbeatable. If you don't then the only platforms that get my full approval for CCW are the Colt Commander (you can get an Al frame too) or the Colt CCO (or a quality built replica by a reputable smith). Anything else has one of the aforementioned drawbacks with reliability and/or performance, and neither of those should be compromises on a CCW, IMO.