dfletcher said:
I suppose it's nitpicking on a cosmetic, but the cylinder flutes look odd as hell to me. They curve inward as they go to the cylinder face. Was there something wrong with plain old straight cut?
That's another recent cosmetic change that counts new guns out for me. I believe it's a holdover from the additional cylinder chamfer on the SP-101 Match Champion edition. Why they added it to the entire SP production line, I do not know. They had a similar "feature" on the GP-100 Match Champion in 357 that luckily did not propagate to the other GP models.
I'm about done with my interest in the SP series, still looking for one of the original 6-shot .22s in nice condition but I can afford to live without it indefinitely. I don't have one of the French police surplus guns but I have at least one of similar vintage which has no problems.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't have an issue with the new MIM hammers and triggers. Having handled both pre-MIM and MIM examples in "like new" condition, the pre-MIM hammers and triggers are relatively sharp and uncomfortable out of the box and can definitely use some polishing/melting. This is typically not an issue with the MIM specimens.