EAA'S MC1911SC Ultimate
a packable 1911— with a View
The MC1911SC Ultimate from European American Armory is a lot of gun for the money. Sporting high-end features
and a workingman’s price, the Ultimate is designed for concealed carry and close encounters.
Just what is the ultimate 1911 pistol? John Browning birthed the gun back when telephones were both tethered to the wall and rare. Despite its undeniably geriatric heritage, we still just cannot get enough of these things. Mr. Browning’s blocky combat pistol remains the mark of the refined gunman even this deep into the Information Age.
Tweaking this most tweakable design is the place where dreams either thrive or die. Some of the world’s most accomplished metalworking artisans churn out modern-day versions incorporating more rarefied technology and advanced materials science than the space shuttle. This recent offering from European American Armory combines this same innovation — with affordability.
The slide deck is cut for a red dot, and the one offered by EAA is as simple as it comes. The gun also
includes an adjustable rear iron sight to suit the purist.
Pertinent Particulars
The EAA MC1911SC Ultimate begins life as an Officers’ ACP-sized gun. This means it sports a 7″ overall length, a 3.4″ barrel and an abbreviated frame accommodating a 6-round single-stack magazine. The gun is 5″ tall and 1.22″ thick. This is essentially the smallest full-power 1911 mankind can produce, other than a very few extreme custom guns.
The details are all seriously top flight. There is a bushingless interface between the tapered barrel and the slide for optimal accuracy. The generous beavertail and ample large ring hammer combine to make hammer bite not a real thing. The oversized thumb safety is bilateral, while the slide stop and magazine release are nicely scaled and appropriately checkered. The grip safety includes a memory bump, and the mainspring housing is flat. The front and rear backstraps are comfortably checkered as well.
The skeletonized trigger is pure art. I have squeezed more than my share of 1911 triggers, and this one is superb. There’s just the tiniest bit of predictable take-up, and the thing breaks like a prom queen’s heart. The gun’s sundry edges are nicely melted for easy holstering and presentation. An aluminum frame keeps the weight at 1.6 lbs., or call it about Walther PPK weight.
I’m not the young stud I once was, and I have of late come to appreciate the benefits of electronic sights. The MC1911SC Ultimate has its slide deck cut for a micro red dot. The gun also comes with an adjustable rear iron sight for the purist. EAA sells its own branded red dot.
Some electronic sights require an engineering degree to operate. This one, by contrast, is stupid-proof. Push the button and it comes on. Push it again and the sight goes off.
The dot is readily usable in both bright light and hard dark. As near as I could find there were no brightness controls. Before you look down your long Roman nose at this just imagine your state of mind should you ever have to use the gun for real. Do you really think you’ll have the presence of mind to cycle through half a dozen brightness settings while facing some thug in a dark parking lot? Me neither.
This simple EAA sight offers everything you need without the fluff you don’t. The sight will even serve as a charging handle in a pinch. Then there are the grips.
The G10 grips are attractive, indestructible and aggressively textured. They also include transparent windows along their centers corresponding perfectly with cutouts in the steel magazine. As a result you can tell at a glance your rounds remaining without calling a timeout to the firefight to drop your magazine. In addition to looking cool these windows are remarkably functional. Previously you had to be a fairly rarefied collector to avail yourself of such as this in the name of ASP.
An oversized hammer and extended beavertail prevent hammer bite. Note the EAA-branded red dot — dirt simple
and tough. The transparent grip panels are the gun’s most appealing feature. Now you can keep track of rounds
remaining without dropping the magazine or doing math while someone is trying to kill you.
One Deadly Snake
Back in the 1970s there were still, believe it or not, gun shops in New York City. Paris Theodore owned Seventrees Ltd., a custom gunleather shop serving customers in the Big Apple back before it became enslaved. Paris’ professional life orbited around concealable handguns, so he set out to build the perfect one. He started out with a Smith & Wesson Model 39 as a foundation.
The thoroughly revamped gun was called the ASP, short for Armament Systems and Procedures. In addition to melted edges, a radical “Guttersnipe” sighting system, and a revolutionary Teflon coating to the metal bits, the ASP also included clear Lexan grip panels. When combined with a skeletonized magazine these grips allowed you to keep track of rounds remaining — at a glance. It was groundbreaking.
The ASP package included a nifty 2-cell magazine pouch using magnets to hold the mags in place. Prices back then using a customer-supplied gun ran around $475. That’s $2,200 in today’s money. Some 450 copies were hand built before the ASP went the way of the dodo. Now the most admirable attributes of the ASP, its see-through grip panels, are available in a reasonably priced powerful concealed carry pistol.
While not an ASP, in our case, GiRSAN in Turkey makes the EAA MC1911SC Ultimate. Historically the Turks have not been serious players in the American gun market. However, all this changed a decade or so ago. I own a pile of Turkish-made firearms, and they are, without exception, well made and professionally executed. The EAA MC1911SC Ultimate is both functional and attractive. The gun also includes a limited lifetime warranty for the original purchaser.
The ASP was a revolutionary but an insanely expensive defensive pistol hand-built during the 1970s.
The ASP pioneered these transparent magazine windows.
Does It Run?
The MC1911SC Ultimate is built to tote, and it doesn’t disappoint. I humped this powerful little gun in an Alien Gear 1911 IWB rig underneath my scrubs at work — and looked cool doing it. You really cannot get any smaller or lighter with a 1911 pistol. The Alien Gear holster even tolerates the red dot sight nicely.
This is a lightweight, compact single stack handgun throwing big .45 ACP bullets. However, I found the pistol to be surprisingly placid. It reliably ate everything I fed it, from lightweight ARX polymer rounds up to heavy SIG hollowpoints. The divine single-action trigger made it surprisingly accurate for such a small chassis.
If you’ve ever run a 1911 before, the manual of arms will be foundational dogma. The generous bilateral thumb safety allows for safe Condition 1 carry with a round in the chamber, the hammer back, and the safety on. With a little practice this is one of the world’s fastest pistols to get into action.
I could easily keep my rounds in a juice can lid at seven meters without much effort. For most self-defense scenarios seven rounds of 230-gr. hollowpoint chaos should be more than adequate to get you out of any reasonable bind. It should take care of a few of the unreasonable sorts as well.
Interestingly, the Mec-Gar magazines are clearly converted from standard six-rounders. The windows are professionally milled in each side, but they carve through the original index holes. This leaves a couple of sharp corners that could nick you if care is not exercised. Practically speaking this likely won’t make much difference.
Right: The gun ran flawlessly with everything we fed it. This was a typical seven-meter group fired from a simple rest.
Ruminations
You can dump as much as you might spend for a nice used car on a tricked-out 1911. I have myself run a few of these rarefied heaters, and they are undeniably sweet. However, the EAA MC1911SC Ultimate offers superlative execution along with a few features you won’t find anyplace else, all at a price around the $700 mark — more in line with a typical plastic pistol. The gun looks cool, carries well, and runs like a scalded ape.
