I keep hearing talk about Tula being pretty underpowered.
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It’s not underpowered, just right for 20" gas system. 2700’/second is 9 football fields in one second. 3200-3400 necessary for long range say 300-600 yards.
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in my opinion it is mostly name recognition/ marketing.
PSA runs the gamut from entry level 395.99 Ar15 (sometimes on sale that cheap in the past) all the way up to AR’s that can cost you 1500.00 or more. not including their sister company which is supposed to be on the level with or higher than those DD, LWRC, Colt, HK, whatever.
First and foremost, all of these guns, start out as being Mil Spec. that means at a very minimum level of sucking.mil spec is just a level that each part must meet, and not fail, to be accepted by the military.
Daniel Defense makes a great rifle, dont get me wrong. I have one myself. But is my PSA equivilent to it? i’d wager yes. why? well lets see here.
Both have collapsable stocks, on 7075 aluminum buffer tubes. mated to Mil spec lower and upper receivers. Some will say the daniel defense may be more refined, or have more attention to detail in the milling of the uppers and lowers, but i dont think so really. so so far in my book its a wash. Daniel defense rifle comes with a Geiselle Trigger. I can put one in my PSA, so i did. so there again, its a wash. Both use bcgs that are either nitrided or phosphate coated, with bolts that are carpenter 158, mpi and hpt, so again a wash. both use small parts kits, that are made in the USA and contain no MIM parts. again a wash.
at this point we’ve covered everything up to the barrel. Daniel defense uses a in house made Cold hammer forged barrel. usually phosphorus coated, with a 1/7 twist chrome lined and magnetic particle inspected. PSA barrels run the gamut here, you can get entry level all the way up to the premier FN herstal Machine Gun Steel made Cold Hammer Forged barrels. As a nice alternative, PSA also has a CHF in house now, and produces CHF barrels that are also nitrided not just phosphorus coated. so for arguments sake, we’ll say that both rifles use in house Cold hammer forged barrels. so thats a wash again. handguards, well both make their own handguards and you can get just about anything you want in length, and configuration. so lets call that a wash too. Flash hiders… well DD has better ones than PSA does… stock to stock… so there may be a point to DD… i dont think it would matter in the grand scheme of things to call DD better over PSA on the High Quality versus low quality… in fact, i think here i’ve illustrated exactly how much marketing plays a factor here.
but you say, if DD sells their rifles at like 1800 - 2400 each, and psa can come in from 400-1500(we’ll say) there is no difference in materials basically, why is PSA considered low end and DD high end? i wager its nothing more than price. PSA tries to sell bulk volume, low cost for the end user, cutting out the middle men in many ways, DD doesnt want to be the low price leader, they want to be what they are, thus the higher prices… SO theoretically both guns are equals, and there is no reason to consider either to be less than the other in quality. Again, Marketing.
the final test however, would be to take each rifle, and test both side by side, for accuracy, and of course to test to see if either would fail before the other with stress tests. Since there have been hundreds of stress tests… I’ll just say this, Id rather get more for my money and go with a PSA anytime over a DD just for the name. Wouldnt you?
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Good post.
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Thanks for your service!
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I agree with Steve. I have mostly high end firearms but that is after I get done customizing them. Very few of my “working” firearms have stayed stock off the shelf. There is always room for improvement on a stock firearm.
Most of my AR lowers are PSA except for some billet lowers that I have from different manufacturers. All my ARs where built from scratch by me. To me the best AR are the ones that I build. I use the best parts from years of experience building and shooting the M16 and the AR15. I pay attention to detail on every one of my builds. Every AR that I have was built for a specific task. I don’t cut corners when I am building an AR. Building an AR isn’t a race, take your time. Work to get all the components working the best that they can with each other. I always do a build sheet for all of my AR so I know every specific part that I used on each AR.
I have never understood buying a off the shelf AR unless you don’t have any experience with the AR platform. I can’t buy any off the shelf AR that has all the specific parts that I want. I am not going to pay for a part on a off the shelf AR to then have to turn around buy the upgraded parts for it.
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PSA started out using some lower priced materials in favor of quantity and price. Nothing wrong with that as function and accuracy were fine, but longevity may have been less than some others. That was years ago and things have changed as PSA created their own manufacturing as well as partnering with other companies. But that initial “cheap” reputation will sometimes follow a company for awhile. Think KIA, Hyuandai etc.
My first AR was a DPMS Sportacle that was around $300 new. At 100 yds. That rifle wil shoot a fly’s eyes out. But no chrome lining etc I don’t expect it to last as long as my Wyndham.
PSA’s initial offerings were not made by them, but rather all outsourced. Any company is only as good as the parts it has… some of those early parts may not have been to spec, and may have had some issues with QC as well, due to growing too quickly in my opinion. but we were not talking about the past, we were talking about now, apples to apples. I’m sure we could go back in the past with just about any company and find errors and accidental issues that they had.
I see your point about being cheap as they were to begin with. I argue that PSA is proud of their ability to be inexpensive for quality parts/rifles and always has been, regardless of what it was. They have a lifetime warranty, and are all made in the USA, from the lower and barrels down to the smallest detent. I know this for sure as i’ve been on multiple tours of just about every facility they run and seen just about all operations they have. The reason i bring up their warranty, is in fact that i dont know of many companies that warranty their products like this, even the high end companies dont always warrantee theirs like this. I get the comparison of Kia & its parent company Hyundai. and you’re right, largely because we’re comparing them now to that company. both companies now are producing some of the nicest cars out there on the market, just as PSA is doing with their rifles and other items like the dagger, rock, and Jakl.
The thing people dont understand about rifles with out chrome lining is that they actually are more accurate than barrels with the chrome lining. Yes they may wear out, but lets put this into perspective… In WWII we used M1 Garands… those boys shot the 30.06 round like there was no tomorrow. the ammo was corrosive and yet they still did it, still were accurate and still functioned iwthout issue all the way through the end of the war. Probably racking up 10s of thousands of rounds shot through that M1 Garand. Well the metal in the garand is no where near as good or hard as the metals we use today in AR-15’s especailly the cold hammer forged ones, and they didnt really have issues with them, but yet folks think that they will wear out their AR’s. I think its hillarious becasuse none of us are going out each day sinking 10k rounds through each weapon we own. hell most of the time our weapons wont see 10k rounds ever. Its just too expensive for us to do, to run 10k rouns through one at each range day would also be impractical. So could a PSA rifle with a chrome lined barrel be as accurate as a non chrome lined barrel? Absolutely it can be… My point being comparing to the Garand is that its highly unlikely that in todays world you or i will never really shoot out our rifles, even without the chrome lining.
i hope im still making sense… i kinda felt like i was rambling some.
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Believe me I am not knocking anything that PSA has done and have been well pleased with every upper and lower that I have bought from them. I also understand metallurgy, heat treating. Nitriding and plating very well.
I’m just saying that sometimes it’s hard to get past being known as the cheap guy. I.E. RIA in 1911 pistols
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The double stack RIA 10mm 1911 is one of my favorite guns to shoot. Super accurate.
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I’ve got a mix of home built guns using PSA parts and complete off the shelf rifles. They all function 100%. My two biggest challenges were my PA10 (adjusting gas took some time) and my PSA 1911. They are both my favorite guns due to the sweat equity I put into them to make them perform.
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A 10mm 1911 is on my wish list 
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It all comes down to quality control. With a brand like Daniel defense or BCM you get 99 out of 100 rifles will be flawless. With PSA maybe even 75 out of 100 will be flawless. That is being generous. I have had 1 upper be returned twice for being out of spec and blemished. Not to say that would never happen with a premium brand but that wouldn’t happen with a premium brand. I love PSA. They are an amazing company. You have to pay for the quality control that a premium company will give you. PSA operates on a different business model. Quantity over quality. They will make it right eventually. You just have to be more patient. PSA is a public service with the prices they charge. Everyone should have a decent ar15 and they are making that possible.
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I always thought that a chrome lined barrel is potentially less accurate than a non-chrome lined barrel because it’s all but impossible to guarantee an absolutely perfectly even application of the chrome along the entire inner barrel surface.
I’m more than happy with all of my PSA rifles and Franken-guns. And every time I’ve gotten a wild hair somewhere and decided to try to measure where in the spec that my PSA parts were, they always fell right about in the middle of the tolerances - exactly where I want ‘em.
Going back to the previous caller’s “one in a hundred” QC issues with the “premium” brands, I’d counter argue that PSA’s ratio is just as good. But Bendy Bill and Daniel Defense don’t put out 100+ different combinations of product with tens of thousands of units shipping annually. So yeah, 1% of 100 is one. 1% of 10k is 100 (except on taco Tuesday). But final assembly comes down to the weakest link in any operation - the human. Mistakes can happen. But with a lifetime warranty - it’s all good. I’ll continue to buy PSA products until I run outta money or time above ground.
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I have never noticed anything second rate with anything I have purchased from PSA. My favorite AR is an SPR that I built from parts that were sourced from several different suppliers. That rifle has a PSA mil spec lower parts kit including trigger assembly. It is not too heavy a pull for my tastes and it works. I have complete confidence in everything I have ever purchased from PSA.
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I’ll have to disagree here with your numbers. i’ve seen and been told by Jamin before the percentage of returns they have versus the number of rifles sold it is very miniscule compared to what the majority thinks. Sadly the folks who get perfectly good rifles rarely complain about them getting perfectly good rifles. in another words you only hear about the % of folks who have issues, which makes it seem a lot given on the volume of rifles sold by PSA. Perhaps @Josiah_PSA can chime in here with more exact numbers if its permitted… but you’d be surprised at how few come back versus how many are sold… not to mention you’d also be surprised at the number that come back, that were made by joe blow in his basement, but yet have a PSA lower, and were sold off to someone, who then has issues, and sends it in to psa, thinking its all their gun, when in fact its a frankenbuild, but yet PSA being PSA takes care of it anyways… theres a lot more of that than is known too im sure. You are right however about them originally focusing on quantity but i do have to say they also focus on quality… at least they have from what i seen in my tours of their facilities. now to be fair, i’ve never had a tour of DD or BCM. So i dont know how they run their stuff, or how different it is from the PSA model.
thats correct and my understanding as well. I hope i didnt confuse that above, because that is what i was trying to say.
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I didn’t mean the numbers to be a one to one comparison. Just a shot in the dark to illustrate the point. I def still believe that good quality control is what separates the higher end rifles from a PSA. A company that builds half the number of rifles at twice the price has the luxury of inspecting their product over and over before it goes out. I know a number of people that have also had issues with PSA quality control. I know that is anecdotal but it’s all I have. They are doing the best with the budget and staff they have. Let me say again I love PSA. Full stop. You can’t expect a company to keep cost low and keep the kind of quality control that a high end builder does. They just don’t have the margins for it. That is really the only difference between the rifles. Quality control.
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There are to many variables that go into how much a manufacturer charges for their product to narrow it down to just one thing, but I don’t believe that additional inspections would account for a 50% upcharge if all else were equal. I think PSA has just done a better job of sourcing, producing and distribution. For example, can you walk into a DD store and buy a rifle? No, there is one or more middle men involved and they all have to get paid. Not to mention those awsome PSA daily deals.
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A lot of it is brand name fanboyism! Some of these guys fanboy so hard, it almost makes me want to drop coin on a DD or SOLGW just from listening to them, LOL! But, at the end of the day, I am still proud to use and support PSA, Anderson and the other unsung heroes of the AR world!
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Every year there is a new “hotness”. SOLGW, Geissele, LaRue, Hodge, KAC, etc. People buy in and then have to justify their overpriced purchase IMO.
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