The SilencerCo Hybrid 46M
The Optimized Sound Suppressor
The SilencerCo Hybrid 46M shown here with these mounts and accessories
will suppress just about anything in the gun box.
Buying a sound suppressor in America is both expensive and painful. There’s the $200 transfer tax, the Information Age equivalent of a body cavity search, and an all but interminable wait. However, what you get in return is a more environmentally friendly, accurate, and generally all-around cool shooting experience.
Amidst a cluttered landscape of sound suppressor manufacturers these days, SilencerCo remains firmly ensconced at the top of the heap. Their design, workmanship, and relative value sets the pace for the industry. The most versatile can in their lineup, and by extension, the most versatile suppressor in the world is their Hybrid 46M. This thing will suppress your favorite .22 plinking pistol all the way up to a massive .338 Lapua Magnum sniper rifle. Swap out the mounts, and the Hybrid 46M will run on your 9mm, .40, and .45ACP combat handguns. The Hybrid 46M really is a one-size-fits-all sound suppressor solution.
In its short configuration, the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M is perfect for pistol-caliber platforms.
Interchangeable endcaps optimize performance for various calibers.
Perception
Granite Rockman moved like a wraith along the dimly-lit sidewalk, his chiseled shirtless physique glistening to the toxic combination of sickly streetlights and amply slathered baby oil. He tossed his shoulder-length black hair jauntily behind his back and clear of his eyes. He had inexplicably eschewed shirts since he had forsaken his position as Indian chief of his native California Atsugewi tribe to become a bodybuilding hitman.
He spotted his mark half a block distant, leaving his penthouse apartment. His target was a community activist who had hit it big trading Dogecoin. The man now used his simply epic wealth to legislate for proper pronoun usage and advocate for the expeditious return of violent criminals to their original neighborhoods after vigorous counseling. The Donald had taken out this contract himself. Granite Rockman knew this one had to be perfect with that kind of juice behind it.
Rockman drew his weapon, a sinister high-capacity fully automatic assault pistol loaded with deadly high-explosive armor-piercing hollowpoint bullets. The gun sported both a devastating silencer and a laser sight for extra deadliness. As his target dropped into his electric Prius crossover, the soulless killer centered his laser dot on the trunk and stroked the trigger.
The subsequent explosion vaporized the environmentally-friendly little car, spreading automobile pieces and pulverized community activist across a two-block radius. Rockman smiled as he returned his assault pistol to its holster and disappeared into the shadows, leaving little more than an oily glisten in his wake. If he hurried, he could just make it home in time for his weekly domestic terrorism meeting…
Nancy Pelosi awoke with a start, unsettled by the vivid nature of her recent dream. Now unable to sleep, she retrieved her phone and pulled up her notes app. Typing furiously, she wrote, “Contact Schumer. Must ban gun silencers. Way too dangerous for civilized society,” before shutting off the lights and returning to bed. Her head nonetheless hit the pillow with a smile. If she was lucky, she could pick up where she left off and soak in a little more gratuitous Granite Rockman before sunup.
With an appropriate piston installed, the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M
will suppress most any centerfire handgun.
Tolerate a little extra weight, and the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M will even work on your favorite rimfire plinking pistol.
Reality
Sound suppressors are utterly harmless. In America, you are statistically more likely to be struck by lightning (1 in 700,000) or killed by a shark (1 in 6.3 million) than you are to be shot by a sound-suppressed weapon (1 in 328 million). Suppressors should be sold out of vending machines in elementary school cafeterias.
Additionally, shirtless muscular Indian chief hitmen are not actually a real thing, either. Your typical contract killer is most likely an obese emphysematous thug trying unsuccessfully to support a liquor habit rather than some slick, stylized professional. However, our legislators apparently form their images of sound suppressors and hitmen from movies. I have reliable information movies are not technically real.
Big-boned 9mm handguns like this SIG MPX are all the rage nowadays.
Fit a direct thread mount, and the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M runs like a champ.
The MPX sports a weird left-hand thread pitch, but this adaptor was cheap.
Technical Details
With the appropriate mounts, the Hybrid 46M really will suppress pretty much anything in your gun collection. This fully welded device is built from such exotic stuff as 17-4 stainless steel, titanium, Inconel, and Cobalt 6 alloys. The suppressor threads apart in the middle, so you can configure it in both long and short versions to balance maximum performance against stealth and concealability.
Interchangeable end caps offer .22 through .45-caliber exit pupils. You really don’t want to get those mixed up. However, like flying, shooting dangerous weapons demands a certain baseline level of personal diligence, responsibility, and attention to detail.
Mounts include direct thread solutions for submachine guns, big-boned pistols, and pistol-caliber carbines. A LID (Linear Inertial Decoupler) mount lets you swap pistons for use on Browning-inspired recoil-operated handguns. This extraordinary device gives the nose of your pistol a little encouragement with each round fired to ensure proper reliability. I’ve never had a stoppage with a sound-suppressed handgun that sported a proper LID.
Flash suppressor and muzzle brake mounts from SilencerCo thread onto the muzzle of your favorite Modern Sporting Rifle or big bore sniper gun. The Charlie ASR mount that comes standard with the Hybrid 46M interfaces with these mounts perfectly. A locking collar keeps everything snug yet still allows instant removal.
As with any compromise, there are inevitable tradeoffs. The Hybrid 46M is a bit heavier than a dedicated pistol can. It is also more expensive than a similar suppressor usable solely on rifles. However, in the Hybrid 46M, you do find a single sound mitigating solution for most anything that shoots. Once you get past the investment in the can and the mounts, the Hybrid 46M will go most anyplace.
Thread on the extension up front for maximum performance. The SilencerCo
Hybrid 46M is a class-beating rifle can in this configuration.
The SilencerCo Hybrid 46M perfectly interfaces with any
5.56mm black rifle sporting a threaded muzzle.
Performance
I shot the Hybrid 46M alongside a SilencerCo Omega 45K and an Osprey, both dedicated top-end pistol cans. I also gauged its performance against a couple of top-flight rifle cans from SIG. Performance across the board was honestly about the same with all platforms.
All centerfire pistol cans are fairly noisy, but they do make you a much more neighborly shooter. A sound suppressor on a semiautomatic black rifle renders the gun usable indoors and transforms it into something that doesn’t sound much like a firearm. The Hybrid 46M on a bolt-action precision rifle running subsonic ammo is indeed movie-grade quiet.
The SilencerCo Hybrid 46M runs great on powerful big
bore platforms like this Kel-Tec RFB in .308.
Little makes a good gun great, like the addition of a
SilencerCo Hybrid 46M modular sound suppressor.
Ruminations
There are rumors that the BATF is about to revamp its electronic forms system and substantially accelerate Form 4 transfers. Considering my last Form 4 currently stands at nine months and counting, that’s about dang time. A guy could die of old age before getting his NFA transfer approved.
When combined with the expense and hassle, all this conspires to make it all the more important that we get maximum versatility out of our sound suppressors. A top-end can like the Hybrid 46M that really will run on most anything seems an eminently sensible choice. While the initial investment is not insubstantial, the end result is worth the effort.
You may have more money than you could ever spend. Perhaps you enjoy waiting on stuff. Fingerprinting and filling out tedious government forms might be your idea of the perfect way to kill a cozy Friday evening. If that doesn’t describe you, however, the SilencerCo Hybrid 46M is the most bang for your suppressor buck available today.
