I have hand loaded for over 25 years and have "some" experience with different presses. From my experience, single stage Rock Chucker, single stage Lee, Lee 1000, Lee 1000 Pro and Dillon 550B, I would say the Dillon is by far your best investment for doing pistol cartridges. I had no luck with the Lee 1000 and the Lee 1000 Pro was even worse. Jam after jam and broken pieces as well. My patience level was not high enough to continue with the Lee Pro, so I bit the bullet, so to speak, and got a Dillon 550B. Best thing I ever did, very few jams, in fact I went about 250 rounds without a single problem. So, if you are set on a Lee 1000 Pro, I have one you can have for $100, comes with 3 heads, no dies.
I have 40 years into reloading and my experiences mimic npbra's. I still run the Rock Chucker for one off loadings i.e. 45-120's, .416 rem etc. I bought a used pro1000 about 20 years ago and it can be really finicky sometimes. Most of the headaches I found with it was the priming system coupled with powder dump at the same time. If the primer wasn't set then the powder would dump thru the case and into the shell plate and jam it up. Then you had to remove everything and clean it out and start over again. The other headache was the plastic gears that advanced the shell plate would wear out and start going out of time and the primer wouldn't seat correctly and then the powder dump issue.
So if you are on a tight budget buy a used machine, replace the plastic gears if need be and use it like this.
1. Station one: De prime and size as normal.
2. Station two: Only prime, do not dump any powder in the case at this time.
3. Station three: Do nothing at this station.
So basically you are just priming the case. Once all your brass has been done (which is very quick) then screw the depriming die out of station one and screw in the bullet seating die in station 3.
Load up the hopper and load as normal making sure there are no primers in the priming system.
You can now load with out worrying if primers are going to jam or powder going to dump everywhere.
Yes it sounds like it will take longer but trust me, you only have to clean the shell plate out of powder once in a 5 box batch and you break even.
Then when you get more money down the road then you can invest in a better machine like a Hornady LNL or a Dillon 550 or 650.
I currently use my Dillon 550 for 95% of my loading. I can load up 8 priming tubes and have them sitting in a mason jar ready to go. Put my box of brass on the right side and bullets on the left and away I go.
I used to spend 4 hours loading one evening every week in the spring when I shoot on the Lee 1000. With the dillon 550 I spend about 2 hours if I don't push it.
As you get older time is worth more than money, when you are younger time doesn't matter that much and you can get by with something cheaper.
