The STI Staccato P is my journey into the world of the 2011. While I’ve been a Glock guy for a while, I’ve got some time running 1911s in the past. A 2011 is my hopeful answer to a faster, more accurate and easy to shoot 9mm. You can read my intro here.

I found my Staccato P on Gunbroker. After paying and arranging for an FFL transfer, I had to wait a few days to be able to pick it up. Once in hand, I was immediately impressed with my purchase. The slide to frame fit was was very smooth and without slop, while the barrel was tight but cycled with ease.

Trigger

One of the main benefits to a 1911/2011 platform is the single-action, sliding trigger. This design allows for a lighter and more crisp break than most others. Out of the box I found the Staccato P to have a little take-up and clean break, but the weight was a little heavy for me. As a gun with carry/duty aspirations this makes sense. However for my use I wanted a little lighter. This is where a good gunsmith can help if you don’t have any experience with the detail on the platform. I was able to work with the sear spring and polish some contact surfaces, which took a little weight out of the equation.

Sights

The 2020 Staccato P features an adjustable rear sight, but mounted slightly forward of the rear of the slide to shield from damage. The front sight is a fiber optic sight, but at .135″ wide. Most of my guns are at .115″ or less, and while it’s “only” .020″ it was quite wide. Knowing this ahead of time, I had already ordered a .090″ wide replacement Dawson Precision front sight. I also prefer a green fiber and installed one.

Safeties

The Staccato P has an ambidextrous thumb safety fitted to the gun. It is contoured well and clicks on and off with a positive feel. The grip safety required a fair amount of force to deactivate. NOTE: After the first range session I tuned the grip safety force with a slight tweak of the sear spring. This helped especially with one-handed operation for ensuring the safety was deactivated when gripping the pistol.

Grip

For 2020 and into the future, STI brought out an updated grip that revises the texture and has some changes to the magazine release for better reliability. That being said, I played with a gun with the new grip at SHOT Show 2020 and did not like the texture as much as the older grip texture that came on the old DVC models. During my research the company that did the texture was Extreme Shooters, and I planned to send the new grip module to them for the texture work…however the gun that I found had the grip swapped with an old style grip already. (link to Extreme Shooters)

Finish

STI advertises that the Staccato has a Diamond Like Carbon (DLC) finish. This type of finish is a very hard metal treatment that is extremely wear and corrosion resistant. The matte DLC finish on the gun is even and looks good. We will see how it holds up over time, but based on other DLC finished guns I’ve had, it’ll take a while to show wear. The barrel was left naked stainless, something 2020 and forward guns have. The older guns had a DLC barrel but apparently some consumers complained as the barrel started to show some wear believing there to be a warranty issue.

Initial Range Session

After dry-firing many hundreds of times before I could get to the range, my weekend range trip finally arrived. I brought along about 450 rounds of assorted ammunition to try out. In about two hours, my assortment of hand-loaded Hornady 125gr HAP, Brazos Precision 135gr Moly, 95gr and 135gr Xtreme Bullets and some factory loaded Hornady 135gr Critical Duty became fired brass.

Since I changed the front sight, my first order of business was to check sight alignment and get things set. My primary load is a hand-load with Hornady’s 125gr HAP bullet, so the sights were regulated for that load at 25 yards. A few clicks to the right were needed and then checking all of the other ammo. Since all of the bullet weights were similar, most were close in point of impact. The 95gr bullets were a little high, but they were noticeably louder than the rest.

Next was just having fun on steel plates. I’ve got a set of 8″ MGM Steel Challenge plates (review here) that are great for providing instant feedback and can be easily moved around for changing up drills. As I shot, I found it easy to keep increasing distance while keeping hits on steel and maintaining speed.

Since I only had the three magazines that came with the pistol, I found myself reloading these often. With the variety of ammo, I had one malfunction where one of the 125gr HAPs caught on the top of the barrel while feeding, but never saw the issue again.

Takeaways From 1st Range Session

• I’m really liking this pistol. I can see burning lots of 9mm and will need to get my Dillon 650 cranking out more ammo!
• One thing I noted was at the end, despite firing 450 rounds, my hands weren’t tired like they would have been with a .45 or polymer gun.
• Since this will work out, I’m going to research holster options.
• Time to find more magazines.