DA P762 v.s Tokarev TT33 v.s. Zastava M57/ M57A
- Thread starter hayday
- Start date
According to my testing:
Dominion Arms P762 –
Chinese pistol derived from the excellent Sig P226 but stretched to handle the more powerful, flatter shooting, historic 7.62X25 round. Chrome-lined bore! A blast to shoot and stupidly accurate. Accuracy comes, in part, from a seemingly tight chamber in the neck area. This creates reloading challenges. Forget about reloading easier to find 71-95 grain .309-.312 bullets – including lead cast sized bigger than .309. Tight neck means that some hot surplus 7.62x25 steel case ammo will stick in the chamber – which doesn’t in the other two. Case head and feed ramp area not well supported. Double Action trigger is too heavy to be useable. Doesn’t throw its brass as far as the M57 or the TT. Supplier has seriously reneged on promises to bring in extra mags – by at least 2 years! Some Americanskis would pee their pants if they could buy this gun. They can’t.
Tokarev TT33 –
Totally underrated design! Beats anything else from the era for long range performance (look on youtube for the guy hitting an 80-yard plate over and over again - off hand - with a WWII era T-33)! Removable trigger sub assembly is cool and practical. WW2 Nazis hated these things. Cheap with affordable mags available everywhere. Surplus ammo available starting at $5 a box. Better gun than what the Ruskies adopted afterward.
Zastava M57 –
Great quality – especially for the crazy low price of these BRAND NEW pistols. “Ups the game” of the Tokarev TT33, especially with the slightly longer grip that holds a 9th round. The magazine safety - found on newer production guns - is worse than useless – but easily snapped off – allowing for a clean mag drop. Accurate gun but most units shoot very low with fixed sights. Front sight already too short to file down and taller rear blades are not available - so I hope you know a good gunsmith. Captive recoil spring is a great improvement over the TT33 design.
We Canadian should have the choice of buying the M57A which has a nice FACTORY slide mounted safety (and no I'm not talking about the goofy US import guns with retrofitted safties). Also let’s all get after the importer to bring in the excellent Zastava factory optional one-piece rubber grips – shown in the photo. It would save the rest of you a trip to Serbia (although it is nice there at this time of year).
To you CZ52 guys – sorry I never had my hands on one.
Where did you get the rubber grips?
The ex military ones are very similar to the current production new ones - differing only in that the ex military ones have the lanyard loop. I'd go for a new one for the extra 30 bucks - as these come in the box with an extra mag and have never shot corrosive ammo. Oversized grips make all the difference. See the picture in my opening post. These can be found on ebay and via Slickguns.com.
If you use a holster watch out for this. The Zastava has its slide release retaining clip reversed compared to the orientation of the one in the TT33. It make perfect sense to have the open end of the clip to the rear so that the clip can't move backward under recoil. However, the slide release retaining clip can easily come off when the gun is withdrawn from a tight holster. You lose the slide release retaining clip and the gun becomes no-functional.
I don't know abut the ex-mil ones, but my brand new M-57 has both the lanyard ring on the bottom left side of the hammer frame, and also one on the bottom of the Mag. Functions flawlessly, but as mentioned above; shoots way low. My retaining clip was installed, from the factory, from the back, forward.
My P762 had a chamber that was so tight I had to get the chamber re-reamed. It handled all ammo properly after that, but its seriously unsupported chamber made problems, creating bulges in the unsupported areas when sub max loads were fired in brass cases. This can weaken cases and eventually cause case ruptures - a problem which otherwise seriously afflicts Glocks.
I got fed up with the lack of available mags for the P762 and got someone to make me a 7.62x25 double stack 1911 (Para Ordnance).
It is a great set-up especially for shooting disposable steel cases in the Winter.
The adjustable sight corrects for the fact that M57s all seem to shoot low like yours. Find a good adjustable sight and a good gunsmith. The gunsmith will have to cut a new groove at least 3/8 of an inch forward of the original one - think about in and your realize why (hint, maybe something about the hammer and the end of the slide?). I used one made for an XD-40 and sold by Calgary Shooting Center (I think). The grips are made in Serbia (possibly by Zastava itself) and found on ebay - brand new. Happy surfing
