When I got my Glock 23 Gen4, I immediately went in search of some affordable magazines that I could use for training. It is common for many people to regard anything other than OEM Glock magazines as strictly training magazines. However, let us not underestimate the need to have reliable training mags so that we aren't getting too accustomed to our guns giving us problems. Training and practice is the time we are supposed to be developing good habits, not anticipating the next issue.
When ETS mags first came on the market, they were so attractive to new buyers because of the clear body and the various capacity options. The options have only continued to grow to now include nearly all Glock and M&P 9mm magazines, as well as Glock 40 caliber mags. You can get mags that mimic OEM capacity, or get extended magazines like that seen on the Glock18. I am personally just hoping they develop magazines for the M&P40 line of pistols.
My first time using the ETS magazines was when I first used the Glock 23. Within the first 1000 rounds I put through the Glock 23, I had a few issues that I would have to attribute to the ETS magazines because of the types of malfunctions and because they only happened when using these magazines.
It is my theory that the magazine springs were so strong that they were causing failures to eject, like seen in the picture below. Basically what was happening is the top round in the magazine was knocking the spent brass out of alignment with the ejector and even out from under the extractor, causing inline stovepipes. This can happen if your recoil spring is so strong that it causes your slide to cycle slower than the magazine can feed the ammunition. After about 1000 rounds, the magazines no longer gave me issues. However, after almost 1800 rounds, the magazines would no longer reliably feed 180gr ammunition. This happened quite abruptly in the form of the rounds not even being pushed up to the feed ramp. This was a clear indication that the springs suddenly lost their spring tension. However, for 1200 rounds, the mags reliably fed my 165gr reloads.
The point of failure of one of my magazines was on the first run it did after being left loaded for about three days. They had remained loaded for longer than that in the past, so I wouldn't say that is the cause. Anyways, the symptom was simply that the last round in the magazine didn't get chambered. I got a click and then upon performing immediate action, I felt that nothing fed. I could tell the difference because of the amount of time I have spent with this pistol and it felt like I had racked an unloaded gun. This is where I performed remedial action and ejected the magazine only to find the last round barely staying under the feed lips. Looking through the side of the magazine, the coils were outstretched and a couple were overlapping. I made the hasty judgement that the coil must have straight up snapped on me. The mag was toast for sure.
After encountering this failure, I made a quick video to basically record what had happened, and then I emailed the manufacturer and gave all the pertinent information they would need for contacting me or sending a replacement part. All I did was tell them what part had failed at what round count and asked what can be done about the failure. I simply got a reply the next business day asking me to confirm my shipping address and apologizing for the inconvenience. Within a week I had a new mag spring and follower in my mailbox. That was awesome to see them jump into action and take care of me like that.
After getting the new spring and follower installed, I took the mag out for a test drive. Honestly I was expecting to have the same issues that I originally had with it causing failures to eject. However, I suspect that the increased slide velocity caused by the worn recoil spring may have allowed the spent casing to eject with force before the mag spring had the chance to interrupt the proper cycling of the pistol. Regardless of what the reason, the magazine worked perfectly. Kudos to ETS Group for taking care of me and making things right. Eventually my OEM mag springs are going to wear out on me. When that day comes, i will have to invest in new springs rather than just get free ones as I did here.
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