I am looking for a good quality AK.  I see that Arizona Response Systems has a nice sounding build for under $600 delivered.  Who here owns one?  Can you give me a review?

I also see the Bugarian SSR85 is in the same price range.  Hmmm, decisions..

The prices of these sure beat the $1200 pre-ban Norinco in my local shop, though the Norinco was very well put together.

http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x257/piaggior/IMG_0319.jpg

The bottom one in the photo is my ARS rifle. I love it. Mark and Paul at ARS really do great work, and they definately stand behind their products. I would like to buy another one of their rifles with the East German furniture dyed black. I really like the way it looks, its really unique.

If you ever decide you want to sell one of them Romy clones, let me know!  Very nice!

Here's my ARS;









It's a nicely built, all-matching G-kit. Well finished with GunKote over parkerizing. All rivets look good as you'd expect from a pro builder like ARS. It's built on a NOdak NDS-3 economy receiver. Mark did a nice job fixing up the G2 trigger group to work well with the NDS-3 (a known issue with this particular combination).

No complaints about this rifle. It shoots well, and the finish work is top notch. The rifle was laser bore sighted at the ARS shop, so when I shot it for the first time I didn't even need to adjust the sites - the were right on. I'd recommend ARS above the more high volume builders (who may not be as concerned about details due to the sheer volume of sales).

-Thirtycal

You've found a "good" quality AK, if you've found ARS.  I've got three of Marks builds and absolutely love'em, I don't have pictures but there is a picture of me with my favorite one on this website (up at the top) from a training class I took with LMS:

http://www.lmsdefense.com/lms/home/

I bought this one in Dec. of 07 and have about 3,000rnds. through it, another two hundred or so tomorrow (shooting a match) and I've got zero issues with this rifle.  More importantly I find it to be "deadly" accurate, and the quality is awesome, especially for under 600.00 delivered.  I'd choose an ARS (Rom) over a bulgarian for steel hardness alone, ARS also stands in front of there products (just sounds better than "standing" behind).  You'll be happy with your ARS AK!
  Let me know if you have any specific questions.  Hope this helps!

I'm preaching to the choir, but I would pay a little extra to have Mark build me an AK.  I have no doubts it would be a first class build and he will stand behind his product.

My WASR-10UF is ugly, but it was cheap and runs great.