Gunblast: Reliable or Not?

[Longitude Zero]

It never ceases to amaze me that EVERY ONE of the weapons and merchandise he "evaluates" comes out with a positive recommendation.

The law of averages would tell a reasonable person that every once in a while a klanger would find its way into Jeff's hands. He had a positive recommendation on the Diamondback handgun that has been reported on various internet forums to be infested with difficulties.

Trustworthy or not??? Or is he nothing more than entertainment with little to no redeeming educational value???

[Mits3kgt88]

Hmm...I've only read a handful of his reviews. Maybe he tends to look the other way when he reviews a gun he likes and doesn't want them to look bad and inferior. Or maybe he's paid to review them. I don't know.

[jocko]

I tend

It never ceases to amaze me that EVERY ONE of the weapons and merchandise he "evaluates" comes out with a positive recommendation.

The law of averages would tell a reasonable person that every once in a while a klanger would find its way into Jeff's hands. He had a positive recommendation on the Diamondback handgun that has been reported on various internet forums to be infested with difficulties.

Trustworthy or not??? Or is he nothing more than entertainment with little to no redeeming educational value???

to think u hit the ol nail right on the head. I have an ol time good friend who was an outdoor writer for years. Basically he covered the fishing industry and he never gave a bad review on a laure, fish finder, rod or reel, and he has a home fu7ll of items those companies sent to him for evualiation with the below PS. tellinghim after the review, just keep the product. Now do u think he was going to give them a bad review and then in a round about way get banned by the fishing industry from getting any freebies to evualate, . He told me one bad review on a product and he was history. Might not be right bhut I bet this stillholds true today and that goes for the firearms industry also. Knock a glock for reliablity an d you wn't get anyt Sigs, or Smiths to write up about These gun makers know exactly who to send a product to for a "good" review. . How many bad reviews have we efvger read in the NRA magazine???

[Longitude Zero]

So true jocko. But to the best of my knowledge nobody here has ever had a review published in print anywhere, or have they?

[heeler]

Could be he is getting a highly prepped gun from the maker to assure it's stellar performance.
I had an old friend that worked for the now defunct Cycle Guide motorcycle magazine and they were always being accused of being overly biased about Honda motorcycles.
My friend was an honest guy and just told it as it was.
But one never really knows.
I always hate to question a man's integrity on no facts.
However I must admit he did get a lot of free evaulation gifts just as Jocko pointed out.

[Ubaldo99]

Too true. I posted a thread to this effect on another handgun forum and got back lots of comments along these lines. I've read quite a few "GunBlast" reviews and they are all invariably favorable. It is to Forums like "KahrTalk" and others that we must look to acquire a real-world assessment of the merit or defects of firearms.

[Jeremiah/Az]

He sure seems to get every new gun that comes out. I wonder if he buys them himself.

The only gun rag I have ever seen that will trash some guns is "Gun Tests" I believe is the name. They do not accept any advertising either. I dropped it because it didn't test many guns that I had any interest in.

[Bill K]

For reasons already stated I give very little weight to the Gunblast reviews.

[MrToad]

If Jeff is paid to do the review, he certainly doesn't appear to upsell. I watched his review of the P45/CW45 and he stated for the money he preferred the CW45 over the P45.

[mr surveyor]

About 10 years ago my son and I had the opportunity to beta test a package of high tech, rather small target group, technical equipment. We were fairly new to that type of technology, but our enthusiasm on related professional chat boards was well known. The equipment manufacturer arrainged for me (us) to beta test their first out units, and exchange for our documented efforts we could either keep the non serial numbered (no warranty) units, or buy the "ready for prime time" units later for 1/2 price. To make a long story a sentence or two shorter, I opted for the former (and believe it or not, we are still using these original beta units that were declared obsolete in 2006), and I wrote a couple of very detail specific related papers that were published in one of our profession related magazines. I won't go into further detail on the product, but I was, and still am amazed at the honesty of the manufacturer in actually building an entry level priced professional grade product out of the "consumer grade" parts that was every bit as good (or better) than most of the professional grade products on the market. Our "reviews", both published and website chatter, apparantly were well received by the manufacturer, and we were given the same opportunity to beta test the second generation of the tools. Same experience. Shortly after that, my son was recognized as the better "reviewer", and low and behold he was approached by another of our trade magazines to do product reviews for their publication 3-4 times per year. We've had stuff delivered to the office to "test and review" that was valued anywhere from $500 to the most expensive package of $180k. I don't think anyone that has wasted the time to read this jibberish this far would doubt me when I say that at least 1/3 of the stuff surv jr. does product reviews on is not ready for prime time. Now, how does the review go? The good traits get high praise, and the bad traits are mentioned with "needs some work, but further development should work great" type comments. It's the nature of capitalistic journalism.... the reviewer is paid by the publisher that is paid by the product manufacturer for the advertisement in the publication. Bad review equals bad advertisement equals lost customer for the publication. There just aren't very many publications (or web sites now) that can stay in business with only subscription fees or membership dues. Without all the slick, colored picture pages and inserts there wouldn't be many magazines (including the NRA mags) available. And without creative writing by the "product reviewers" there would be about 1/3 less products displayed in the printed publications or on the interenet super highway.

was I rambling again



surv

[QuercusMax]

It never ceases to amaze me that EVERY ONE of the weapons and merchandise he "evaluates" comes out with a positive recommendation.

Indeed, very suspicious. Either the reviewers are not very perceptive or they only publish the positive ones. In either case, you have to wonder if you, the reader, are getting the whole story.

We need to know the facts, which can be good or bad. But as several have pointed out, manufacturers are only interested in getting positive reviews. And many people actually don't want to hear negative reviews, because they are disappointing or downers.

I have written quite a few reviews on Amazon, and have been contacted by several book publishers who offered me other books for free. Unsurprisingly, this only happened from publishers whose books that I had given a positive review. I declined the offers.

I've only read Gunblast a little bit, but I didn't find it that helpful. Maybe this was the reason.

[les strat]

This is why I like Kickok45's youtube channel. He gives the ins and outs of each gun he gets/tries out. When he doesn't like something about a particular weapon, he states it, but in a nice way. I know he doesn't want to quit getting guns from Ruger, etc, but doesn't mind calling out things "some folks" won't like, like mag disconnects, excessive safety doo-dads....
But man can he shoot. He makes any gun look good!

[Longitude Zero]

Bout what I figured. This is another reason that I pay almost no attention to the self annointed so called gun cogescenti in the mags like Sanow, Marshall, Gary Paul and the lot of them are just paper posers.

Of all the writers the only real deal is the late Jim Cirillo. I had the good fortune to meet him and he is truly the master. Ayoob is kinda good, however he has light years to go to even be in the same class as JC.

[TheTman]

Gunblast did help influence me to buy my Charter Arms .44 special. There aren't that many lightweight .44's around, so I did read his review, and liked his accuracy results and the way he said the gun felt and that the recoil was not excessive for such a lightweight gun partially do to the nice rubber grips it came with. I found everything he said about it true, although I've never tried to duplicate the small groups he got.
I remember Jeff Cooper hating the gun, stating while the idea was great, the execution was terrible, but that was quite a few years ago, with different owners and such. I got about what I figured I'd get, a nice lightweight .44 special, that shoots better than you would think it would. I look at it as a shoot a little, but carry a lot gun. I don't think it will last much over maybe 10 thousand rounds. Since I replaced the rubber grips with the Barami Hip Grippers that have a hook to snag your belt or the top of your pants, the recoil is not nearly so pleasant, but concealibility has been enhanced greately. It did have to go back for service once, the cylinder got some play in it somehow and the firing pin did not striker the primer hard enough to detonate the cartridge. It was fixed free and back in my hands within a couple of weeks. Has shot fine ever since then. I wear my padded shorty biker gloves when shooting it, or else swap out the grips, a 5 minute job. I figure in a situation you're not going to worry about your shooting hand hurting until a lot later. It definately packs a wallop. I wanted a .44 special since thats about as close to a .45 as you can get in a rimmed cartridge, and there is very good SD ammo available for it.
Thats my experience, I felt what he said was true about the gun. Perhaps if he doesn't like a gun he states that privately to the gun maker. I do like Hickock45 too, he seems very honest and is one hell of a shot, and I trust his opinion very much. There are a lot of other youtube pieces on this or that gun, that I take with a grain of salt.

[O'Dell]

No question about it - Jeff never met a gun he didn't like. I used to use his reviews to reinforce my decision to buy a "questionable" gun I just wanted. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes not.