Springfield Armory 1911 TRP Contour Carry Review
Light But Not a Lightweight
Made in America, the Springfield Armory 1911 TRP Contour Carry was reliable,
accurate and fun to shoot, if a bit snappy in recoil.
If you’re favorably disposed to the Colt Commander as a concealed carry weapon, I suggest you take a close look at the new Contour Carry 1911 in Springfield Armory’s TRP series. Springfield Armory has more experience than most makers with the 1911, and among the laurels they can proudly wear is the selection of their custom Professional model 1911 by the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. That pistol was the inspiration for Springfield Armory’s TRP (Tactical Response Pistol) line, developed as a semi-custom and lower-priced gun with comparable performance and features.
Previous TRP pistols were all 5″ barrel government model platforms. Still, now they are available in 4.25″ barrel and slide lengths to replicate the handling and carry characteristics of the shorter commander-sized pistol. The aluminum alloy framed, round butt 1911 TRP Contour Carry might have easily been named the “Concealed Carry” because of its light weight (34.5 oz. fully loaded with seven in the magazine and one in the chamber) and rounded butt grip frame that reduces printing through your clothing. This pistol has a lot of other premium features, which I’ll get into later. With a $1,999 MSRP, it’s on the low end of the price range of high-end 1911 platforms. The good news is a check of online retailers showed a street price of around $1,780.
The Springfield Armory 1911 TRP (Tactical Response Pistol)
line is based on the custom Professional model they built
for the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.
The 1911 TRP Contour Carry is a commander-sized, 4.25" barrel,
aluminum alloy frame, semi-custom pistol with the frame, slide
and barrel hand-selected for fit.
Carry Appeal
Aside from its high build quality, I expect the Contour Carry’s weight and grip shape will be the features that really appeal to the concealed carry market. I personally like the feel of a round butt, and I love the concealability advantages, but less grip surface area does reduce the stability of your hold compared to a standard 1911 grip frame. It also changes the way recoil is transmitted to your hand, though whether that change matters may be moot. The trade-off for having an easier-to-carry lightweight aluminum frame 1911 is more recoil and more recovery time between shots. In case you’re concerned about the durability of an aluminum alloy frame, the added recoil doesn’t matter to the gun. They use different recoil springs (2 to 4 lbs. heavier), and the main issue of premature feed ramp wear was worked out decades ago. The Contour Carry is typical in using a barrel with an extended feed ramp that fits into a slot in the frame. Chambered in .45 ACP, I didn’t find the increased recoil a deal-breaker. It is obvious but manageable. Fortunately, the TRP has some features that improve control of the pistol.
The Contour Carry’s aggressively textured VZ G10 Hydra pattern grip panels with broad, deep, undulating, diagonal channels appear to increase the amount of surface area for the flesh of your hand to press into. They have a deep, flat cutout for your right thumb behind the magazine release button that helps keep your grip more consistent. In addition, the frame front strap and mainspring housing are deeply checkered at 20 lines per inch. The sharp checkering has real bite, and when combined with the grip panel design, it gave me the impression my hand was glued to the gun when I squeezed. Whatever the increase in recoil might be with the aluminum Contour Carry, its well-thought-out grip surfaces were working with me to control it.
Field stripped, you can see the TRP Contour Carry uses a commander-sized
barrel bushing, spring, spring guide and spring cap. The barrel and slide are
hand-numbered to match them to the frame through the manufacturing process.
Below: Note the extended feed ramp on the barrel, which protects
the aluminum alloy frame from impact and gouging damage.
The Details
Overall, the TRP Contour Carry I tested showed an exceptionally tight fit between the slide and frame and a tighter-than-average barrel to bushing and bushing to slide fit, with the final result being a tighter-than-average lock-up in battery. Springfield hand matches the slides and barrels to the frames to get these snug fits. When disassembled, I noticed the barrel and slide both had the last two or three digits of the frame serial number hand-marked on them with an electric engraving pencil. The slide and frame are machined from forgings, which offers the most strength and durability compared to cast or milled from billet methods. Some metal injection molding parts were apparent, particularly the ejector, hammer, slide lock release lever and ambidextrous safety levers.
While this TRP Contour Carry is a commander-length pistol and uses the shorter commander-length guide rod, spring cap and barrel bushing, it has Springfield Armory’s longer government model style frame with a beefy full-length dust cover sporting a very versatile, three-slot Picatinny rail. That’s plenty of space for the more powerful, longer run-time tactical lights that use bigger batteries. Other functional enhancements include forward slanting, square bottom, gripping serrations on the front and rear of the slide, and a grooved slight plane to reduce glare.
The TRP has rugged steel sights dovetailed into the slide and drift adjustable for windage. They are traditional, rectangular front post and rear notch style, enhanced with self-illuminating tritium vials to create a three-dot sight picture for aiming in darkness. The rear has a vertical face to hook the belt, or some other surface, for racking the side one handed. The rear faces of the sights are horizontally grooved with fine lines to reduce distracting light reflections.
The three-dot, tritium night sights are rugged steel and dovetailed
into the slide, allowing for windage adjustment by drifting. Note the
grooved sight plain along the top of the slide to minimize distracting reflections.
The frame and slide are Cerakoted, but the barrel and other
steel parts inside are nitride-finished. All controls worked
smoothly right out of the box.
The Contour Carry has the same sized frame as Springfield Armory’s
full-size government model TRP pistols. This gives an ample
accessory rail space.
Handling
The controls all worked smoothly right out of the box. It has an ambidextrous thumb safety with long levers for easy manipulation and a grooved head on the magazine ejector button. The three steel, seven-round, flush-fitting magazines all fell free when released. The inner edge of the magazine well is relieved on the sides and back to help the magazine find its way when loading.
To protect the shooting hand from hammer bite, the TRP Contour Carry has an extended beavertail type grip safety with a raised heel for more positive engagement. The hammer is the lightweight, skeletonized, long spur type favored by many competitors for the slight advantage it may offer in terms of increased speed. The trigger is Springfield Armory’s Gen2 Speed Trigger that is essentially a very long, skeletonized aluminum trigger with a grooved face and a concealed overtravel adjustment screw on the back. Skeletonized aluminum triggers are another traditional competition upgrade intended to reduce the mass of the trigger to increase its speed and minimize its inertia. Without weighing in on their actual, discernible utility, I’ll say that skeletonized hammers and triggers have been around so long that a serious competition 1911 without them seems like a car without fenders. More quantifiable was the TRP’s trigger pull weight, which ranged from 4.75 to 5 lbs. It broke crisply after about 0.045″ of take-up and is a fine trigger for a self-defense pistol.
The Contour Carry frame and slide are finished in your choice of black or coyote brown Cerakote. I’ve seen plenty of anodized aluminum frame pistols get worn bright in spots over a decade or so of regular use. I’m not sure if that’s due to flawed anodizing, the acids and oils on our skin, or if it’s a normal example of wear and tear. After years of stubborn old-fashioned resistance on my part, I’m willing to give Cerakote a try on aluminum framed guns. Cerakote is a baked-on ceramic surface finish (essentially a super durable paint) that also provides protection against abrasion and corrosion, provides some lubricity, and is respectably resistant to chipping. While it has to be sprayed on and, as such is hard to get in the nooks and cavities, properly applied Cerakote has proven itself to have a lot of merit as an exterior surface finish for firearms. The barrel and other interior steel parts of the Contour Carry are nitride-treated (blued) to a black finish.
Contour Carry describes the pistol’s rounded butt, which reduces printing
through your clothing when carried concealed. Note the aggressive
20 lines per inch checkering on the mainspring housing
and the broad channels on the VZ Hydra grip panels.
Skeletonized long spur hammer, extended beavertail grip safety,
matted viewing surfaces on the rear faceof the sights and
ambidextrous safety levers are standard.
Shooting The TRP
I really enjoyed shooting the Contour Carry in the same way I enjoy shooting .357 Magnum K-Frame revolvers from time to time. A lively gun can be fun in moderation. This pistol has a grip that’s fun to squeeze. It’s sort of like a hand massage. I did my accuracy testing from the bench at 25 yards, shooting five-shot strings with three different loads. The most accurate was the Winchester PDX1 Defender Elite, with its 230-grain JHP that features a bonded jacket to control expansion and retain bullet weight in the target. This load averaged groups of 2.35″ and 879 feet-per-second (FPS) velocity. Winchester WIN3GUN Competition Ready 230-grain truncated cone jacketed soft tip and Fiocchi Defense Dynamics 200-grain JHP nearly tied for accuracy with groups averaging 3.26″ and 3.27″, respectively. Their average velocity measured 790 FPS and 890 FPS. The pistol functioned perfectly with all three ammo types as well as a random miscellanea of ammo I ran through it, shooting at paint cans at 25 yards in one handed bullseye fashion for fun. I was pleased with the accuracy, reliability and overall quality of the Contour Carry, doubly so because it, like all other Springfield Armory 1911s for the last 10 years or so, is entirely American-made.
For more info: Springfield-Armory.com
