Tweaking The High Standard Magazine

How can you make this company’s sweet-shooting .22 pistols operate more reliably? Follow this step-by-step photo tutorial.

High Standard’s competition 22-caliber pistols enjoy a devout following among paper- and metal-target shooters. Central to the line’s appeal has been its solid accuracy at all the competition distances. In fact, company officials say that during a recent ammunition test for another magazine, a High Standard 10-inchbarrel silhouette pistol shot 7/8-inch average groups at 100 yards, besting a well-known smallbore position rifle at that distance. However, acquiring this kind of accuracy—and getting reliable feeding in the High Standard semi-auto at the same time—can be a ticklish undertaking, and a great many shooters don’t know how to tune their High Standards to get as much out of the guns as possible.

“We probably get at least three calls a day where a customer is having feeding, firing, or ejection problems with their guns, and, unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do at the factory to prevent those problems,” says High Standard’s President Alan Aronstein. “Many—or all—feeding problems can be traced to variations in factory .22 dimensions. We can’t control how the ammunition makers size their bullets, cases, and rims, and we can’t control which ammunition a certain shooter will pick to shoot in his High Standard. The only solution is for the shooter himself to adjust the magazines we provide and make them feed reliably.”

That operation isn’t hard to do, but it helps to have seen it performed. Still, if you don’t know which spots to concentrate on or how you’re trying to adjust them, you can easily ruin a magazine.

In 20 easy steps, here’s how Aronstein recommends the High Standard magazines be tuned:

For more information on High Standard pistols, contact High Standard Mfg. Co., Inc., Dept. PS, 4601 S. Pinemont, No. 144, Houston, TX 77041, telephone (713) 462-4200, fax (713) 462-6437.