The downsides to Desert Tech is that their quality control (and general attention to detail and refinement) sucks donkey schlong, their customer service is spotty at best, sometimes great sometimes abysmal, they have had issues with tolerance stacking and inconsistency, the triggers can be hit or miss, but can be honed to be just about as good as a trigger tech diamond set at 1 pound if you’re willing to work on it. My trigger on my A2 ranks with trigger tech, on my HTI It is as good as an old jewel plus as other others have said you either like their economics or you don’t. The bolt throw can take some getting used to, but is totally doable, especially once it’s broken in and you learn the proper technique which is treat it like a two bit whore on navy payday: Run it hard.
The upsides are that you can have one expensive scope sitting on a rig that uses five or 10 caliber spanning 223 up to 338. Also, same bipod, same trigger, same everything except for the caliber, which is very convenient. The rifles are stupid accurate because of the broad 5 to 6 inch clamping mechanism and repeatability after changing a barrel is almost always within one click on your scope. The short overall length allows me to run a 40 inch barrel in my 50 BMG and have it be as long as a 29 inch barrel in a regular 50. The covert exploits that footprint advantage even more. It reduces the clutter in my safe enormously because I have six different calibers for my SRS and two different calibers for my HTI - but only two guns in there rather than eight. Finally, when you need a new barrel, you don’t need to send off your whole action and everything to the gunsmith, he just needs a barrel extension and maybe a bolt and can just ship it to you and it is plugged and play as opposed to a custom rig which is gonna require the whole gun being shipped back-and-forth and heads, spacing checked and so on.
Would I take one to war? Absolutely not because Desert Tech has not invested in the quality control that they need to have me bet my life on it. But in a low stakes environment, it is a great way to shoot steel or varmints or game or whatever.
I really really really love mine. But I have shot them enough over the past 12 years to be well familiar with their faults which I cannot ignore and will not hide.
