1911s run the entire price gamut. Buyers can choose anything from an inexpensive Filipino gun up through a matched pair of Cabot pistols made of meteorite. In recent years, the new family of Turkish 1911s imported by SDS has started to earn a reputation as good values at a moderate price point. Of special note are the Tisas clone pistols like the Raider, which mimic the classic lines of the M45A1 CQBP. New for this year is a version of the Raider with an optics cut and threaded barrel. Join us as we put it through its paces.

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Disclosures: SDS Imports provided this pistol for review. I purchased the ammunition. TFB paid the standard rate for our review articles.

Features

Most gun aficionados are familiar with the M45 Close Quarters Battle Pistol. This USMC-issued handgun was the last US military 1911, leaving service in 2023. It featured many design updates from the older models, most noticeably the FDE finish and an accessory rail.

Tisas is a Turkish firearm manufacturer with a very broad range of 1911 models in its catalog. SDS Imports is the US-based importer for these pistols, which also includes the Military Arms Corporation brand. The “Raider” (a reference to the Marine Raiders) is an almost-clone of the M45A1. I can hear the clone nerds furiously typing angry comments, but I don’t care. For the average person this is close enough to count.

The B45RDG TH takes the M45-style pistol and adds some modern updates. Most noticeably those are a .578×28 threaded barrel and an RMSc/Holosun K optics cut. It comes in a little hard case containing two eight-round blued magazines, a barrel bushing wrench, and an optics mounting plate. The MSRP for the B45 RDGTH is $803.99, and they are available at retailers for around $700. Also, I’m just going to call it the Raider because using a model number feels wrong.

The trigger pull breaks at five and a half to five and three quarters pounds very consistently. A Picatinny rail dust cover allows for weapon light mounting. The ambidextrous safety snaps solidly between positions and both the manual and grip safeties functioned properly.

Optics Mounting

One departure from the original Raider and M45 CQBP is this gun’s optics cut. An included optics plate offers an RMSc/Holosun K mounting surface. The slide of a 1911 is very narrow and using a wider footprint would have the optic overhang the sides of the slide by a wide margin.

Setting up the optic was no more difficult than this task usually is. The key is having lots of screw options on hand! I mounted both the Holosun EPS and ZeroTech Thrive for portions of the review. Both looked good on the gun, but did not fare well on the range. No matter what I did with changing fasteners, increasing torque settings, or using thread locking compound, the optics would not hold zero. Sometimes the optic worked loose from the plate. Sometimes the adjusting mechanisms of the sights would shift under recoil. This was a real downer. Perhaps there are other dots that would stand up to .45 ACP recoil, but I did not have one on hand. I eventually gave up on using an optic and just ran it with the iron sights.

On The Range

The Raider performed excellently on the range. I have been victimized by inexpensive 1911s previously, and my expectations were measured at the start of the review. In the first couple of magazines, there were a few failures to feed, and I was worried that this was a harbinger of things to come.

Thankfully, it was not. After the first 200 rounds, we were off to the races, and there were no other issues until the gun had over 1,000 rounds on it without cleaning. Even with a nice layer of filth from all of that shooting (with a decent amount being suppressed for extra mess), I just added some gun oil and went back to work.

This kind of review calls for some hard use, and I obliged. I did some mini burn-downs (as much as can be done with single-stack magazines that need frequent refilling) that got the gun hot enough to need gloves. It kept trucking along like a champ.

It was not all flowers and sunshine, though. Other than the previously-mentioned issue with the red dots, my big gripe was the right-side safety lever. For some reason, the surface that faces the web of the hand has a sharp corner. It absolutely ripped up my right hand during a range session lasting several hundred rounds where I had forgotten my shooting gloves at home. This was baffling because the left side safety has a nice chamfer on that surface.

Being a function-over-form sort of guy, I first thought of just removing the offending safety lever. When I started to take off the grips, I found that the grip screws had started to work loose. A little blue threadlocker fixed that going forward.

Simply removing the safety was not a true solution, though. That left a large uncovered space leading into the remaining left side safety lever. Safeties potentially becoming jammed with debris or gravel are a bad thing, so I decided to take more drastic action.

I decided to round off the sharp edge with some files. That is an invasive thing to do, and it obviously destroys the surface finish. However, I decided it was worth it because I would do a lot of bleeding over the course of the review without that change. Once that was reshaped and reinstalled, it stopped tearing up my hand. This really should come from the factory this way, though.

Turning back to happier matters, the accuracy situation was very good. I did a fair amount of shooting at 25 yards with it, and it will hold decent groups well inside the black on a B-8 target. This is totally adequate for any use other than bullseye competition, and I would bet that with some tuning up like a match-grade barrel bushing and adjustable sights, it might be up for that too.

I ran a rapid-fire bullseye stage just for fun to see how the gun would do. That is two repetitions of five rounds in ten seconds, fired strong-hand only at 25 yards. Despite the combat-oriented sights, I managed a 96/100-2X. That won’t take home the trophy from the national matches, but it is not shabby at all.

Suppressed Use

The other difference between this Raider and the true M45 is the threaded barrel. Thankfully, this worked far better than the optic mounting situation! The barrel threads are the standard .578×28 pitch. I did a lot of shooting with an old SilencerCo Octane 45 and a Hybrid 46. Both functioned perfectly.

.45 ACP is a great suppressor round because it is almost always subsonic. I had the opportunity to shoot some old cars, and it was extra fun with a suppressor. I had never really heard bullet impacts on cars over the noise of the shots previously. If the opportunity presents itself to try it for yourself sometime, I highly recommend it.

Ammo & Magazine Compatibility

SDS ships two blued 8-round magazines with extended floorplates with the B45RDG TH. I had a handful of misfeeds in the first 200 rounds with those magazines, but after that initial break-in, both worked fine. I also used a few other reputable magazines, including Ed Brown, Wilson Combat, and Chip McCormick, all of which also functioned correctly with FMJ and hollow point ammo.

I fired 1,575 rounds during this review, mostly regular 230-grain FMJ brass cased ammo. The only real malfunctions were those mentioned previously with the included magazines during break-in. There were a few times toward the end of the review where the gun failed to fully return to battery, but that was due to the lack of cleaning. A simple tap on the rear of the slide got the gun into action again. Any level of appropriate maintenance or care would have solved this, though.

Of particular note was the Remington 185-grain ammo, which was very accurate in this gun. 185-grain ammo has a long tradition for match and bullseye use in .45 ACP pistols, and if I were doing either of those things with this gun, I would opt for that ammo weight. The weightier 230-grain options would still be better for suppressed use, though, even though the 185-grain loads will still likely be subsonic.

This version of the Raider is selling for less than $600 at online retailers, and the base model without the threaded barrel or optics mounting is even less expensive. For me, even with my optics struggles on this gun, the threaded barrel alone is worth the extra money. Suppressed .45 Auto is a beautiful thing. That is even more true when the host pistol is as low-drama as the Raider.

The Tisas/SDS/MAC family has a plethora of different 1911 models available. If they are anything like the Raider, they deserve your consideration. Though this is not an expensive handgun, it has impressed me with its durability and accuracy. Tisas is, without question, the budget 1911 to beat on the market right now.