Ed Brown, who passed in 2024, was one of the 1911 Illuminati, a small group of gunsmiths in the 1970s and ’80s who figured out how to turn a clunky service pistol into an accurate, reliable, user-friendly sidearm that became the number-one choice of professionals for years. Among many other upgrades, Ed Brown’s “beavertail” grip safety puts the shooter’s hand higher on the gun than any previous design, and he invented the “Speed Bump” at the bottom to ensure deactivation, which is now copied by many. Twenty-five years ago, Brown launched the “Bobtail” featuring a cut to the corner off the frame bottom, the part of the gun that prints under a covering garment when concealed.
The Kobra Carry Dual Caliber is as much a flex by Ed Brown Products, Inc., to show off what it can do. It’s a fascinating package for the discerning Model 1911 fan. It starts with the popular all-stainless Kobra Carry, a Bobtail Commander-size pistol in .45 ACP, and adds a complete 4-inch 9mm EVO top end with a Holosun optic, ejector and slide-stop.
The Kobra Carry
The all-stainless .45 ACP Kobra Carry pairs a full-length frame with a 4 1/4-inch Commander-length barrel. With an empty magazine, it weighs 37.3 ounces. It includes two seven-round .45 ACP magazines and two nine-rounders. The stainless-steel mags fit flush to the grip, also made by Ed Brown.
For the .45 ACP caliber, you get ramped, Novak-style sights. They’re not electronic, but irons meant for defensive use. The front sight is a Trijicon HD, which has a big orange ring around a tritium insert. The rear sight is a Novak Lo-Mount copy designed to not snag on a cover garment. It’s plain black — no dots — and I’m okay with that. The rear sight is a window frame; look through it, not at it. You don’t want anything that distracts your eye from the front sight.
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This pistol uses the original — not full-length — recoil spring, guiderod and barrel, just as John Browning intended. It has a swinging link and no ramp. I found that interesting because of the 9mm slide assembly. Traditionally, 9mm 1911s have integrally ramped barrels to improve reliability with the shorter cartridge. A slot must be cut in the frame to accommodate the ramp. Brown’s 9mm barrel is throated and polished, but it feeds from the ramp in the frame, just like the .45.
Model 1911 Artwork
The Kobra Carry is a high-end 1911 made by a custom gunsmith shop, meaning the pistol includes upgrades and extras; some are obvious, others not so much. For example, the bevel along the bottom of the slide prevents the user from slicing his thumb when running the gun with a proper thumb-high hold over the thumb safety. In fact, every corner on the pistol was rounded. The right side of the slide-stop pin is machined flush with the frame where the hole has a beveled edge. There’s a heavy target crown on the barrel and serrations on the sides of the rear sight, should your fingers move up while racking it. Then there’s the fact that you don’t even feel the disconnector when cycling the action.
Two things make a Kobra Carry .45 stand out: The Bobtail frame and Snakeskin slide and frame texturing. The Snakeskin texture on the .45 slide is not that aggressive, although it looks stylish. The Snakeskin texture on the frontstrap and mainspring housing, however, is something else entirely.
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Ed Brown’s Snakeskin texture is a fascinating example of what you get when artists are left to their own devices. Run your finger up the frame and the Snakeskin is just a little bumpy. Run your finger down the frame and every edge of that texture bites and doesn’t want to let go. To me, it feels as aggressive as hand-cut checkering. Directional texturing is meant to only grab you when the pistol is recoiling. Genius. I do wish the texture went further down on the mainspring housing to the curve of the Bobtail, but if that’s how it was applied, it could chew up a cover garment.
Having shot a number of 1911s with carry cuts to the bottom of the mainspring housing, that lack of a corner alters the grip angle and presentation. The difference is not a lot, but if you’ve had any time behind a 1911, you’ll note that the Bobtail makes the grip angle a little more vertical.
The trigger pull on Guns & Ammo’s sample was excellent, as expected. Even with full-power springs everywhere in the gun, the trigger pull measured a crisp 4 pounds, 4 ounces, with minimal take-up and overtravel.
The Top-Ends
The 4-inch 9mm slide assembly is distinctively finished black, as is the 9mm ejector. At the front and rear of the slide, there are subdued cocking serrations that are both angled forward and cut in at the top. It isn’t just shorter, as this is Ed Brown’s EVO upper. The slide is actually narrower. The 9mm EVO slide is .855-inch wide according to my caliper, while the .45 ACP Kobra Carry slide is .92 inch. That’s why there are different serrations at the top corners. There’s just not enough metal on the sides for serrations to be deep enough to be functional.
The Kobra Carry was configured with a plain black front sight on the 9mm EVO slide assembly. At the rear, the slide was provided with a Holosun optic featuring a green circle-dot reticle. The SCS has an aluminum housing and a solar panel on top. The optic has an onboard battery that is not replaceable, but Holosun indicates that — with just moderate exposure to bright light — you should never run out of power. With the optic-equipped 9mm top end installed and an empty magazine in place, the gun weighed 36.4 ounces.
As for changing the two slide assemblies, it’s as simple as fieldstripping the gun — or would be, if you didn’t have to replace the ejector. That one detail is why other companies haven’t offered this package before. When compared to the fat boy (the .45 ACP), the 9mm cartridge is both shorter and thinner. A differently machined breech face is necessary — hence the separate slide — an extractor in a different location, and a repositioned ejector. However, the ejector is mounted to the frame — not the slide.
The ejector slides down into the top of the frame and is oriented with two integral pins, one larger in front and a smaller one in back. On the 9mm ejector, I noted a tiny groove in the front of the forward pin. A check of the Kobra Carry’s frame showed me that there is a narrow roll pin through the top of the frame. Punch out that roll pin, and you can swap out the ejector. You’ll need a 5⁄64-inch punch, but a roll pin starter punch does the job right.
Here’s my biggest complaint with this package: Everything needed to change one upper for the other should be included at this price, including punches. Ed Brown Products does have a YouTube channel and a 2-minute how-to video on this process. It’s a simple process provided you’ve got the right tools. Unless you do a lot of gunsmithing, you may not, meaning you’ll need to spend a few bucks to buy the tools.
Having to change the ejector makes the caliber conversion on the Kobra Carry a 5-minute job rather than a 2-minute job. You physically can’t mount the 9mm slide to the frame with the .45 ejector still in place, so that’s a mistake you don’t have to worry about making.
The slide-to-frame-to-barrel fit on the 9mm top end was just as tight as with the .45. The 9mm barrel mated flawlessly with the polished ramp of the frame, and I found the differences between the two uppers fascinating. The .45 ACP has a traditional barrel with a bushing, and the original recoil spring setup. The 9mm has a bushing-less fluted bull barrel, but — unusual for a 9mm — no ramp. The 9mm also uses a full-length stainless recoil spring guiderod and a flat-wire recoil spring, both more modern choices. The .45 ACP has the original internal tensioned extractor as Browning designed, too. The 9mm has an external extractor with tension provided by a spring. The spring-powered external extractor is arguably a superior design, which is why that’s what we see used in almost every modern pistol. It’s just not as common when describing the various Model 1911 pistols.
At the Range
There were no surprises. The pistol was a joy to shoot and completely reliable in both .45 ACP and 9mm. All-steel 1911s seem heavy until you start touching off .45s, and then you appreciate the weight. When I shot the 9mm EVO slide assembly, recoil was minimal unless I loaded the gun with stiff +Ps. The gun was as accurate as expected from an Ed Brown 1911. The full-length grip allows you to get your entire hand on the gun, and the Snakeskin locks it into place.
Regarding terminal performance, individual .45 ACPs perform as well as any other standard pistol cartridge on the market — including 9mm. The downside to the .45 has always been increased recoil and lower capacity. Both of those are important considerations when you understand that pistols are poor fight stoppers, and you will likely need multiple hits to put a bad guy down. One-shot stops do occur, but they are the rare exception and not the rule. In comparison, 9mm 1911s have less recoil and increased capacity, which is especially important when you’re dealing with single-stack magazines. This leads me to my only other complaint. Apart from the tools needed to do the caliber conversion — which should be included but aren’t — my only other complaint is with the magazines. The seven-round .45 and nine-round 9mm are the capacities of original magazines. Modern flush magazines up both of those capacities by one, and guys like me are going to want those. You’ll probably want to spend a little cash on higher-capacity 1911 magazines and a few tools.
In total, the Kobra Carry Dual Caliber model is an interesting pistol-and-a-half. Ed Brown Products has figured out how to give us the two most popular but physically different calibers in a 1911 that was built for concealed carry. And it runs!
Ed Brown Cobra Carry G4 Dual Caliber
- Type: Recoil operated, hammer fired, semiautomatic
- Cartridge: 9mm, .45 ACP
- Capacity: 9+1 rds. (9mm), 7+1 rds. (.45 ACP)B
- Barrel: 4 in. (9mm), 4.25 in. (.45 ACP)
- Length: 7.5 in. (9mm), 7.75 in. (.45ACP)
- Height: 6.25 in. (9mm), 5.5 in. (.45 ACP)
- Width: 1.35 in.
- Weight: 2 lbs., 4.4 oz. (9mm); 2 lbs., 5.3 oz. (.45 ACP)
- Slide: Carbon steel (9mm), serrations; stainless steel, snakeskin (.45 ACP)
- Frame: Stainless steel, snakeskin texture
- Safety: Grip lever, thumb lever
- Sights: Black post (front), Holosun SCS 320 (9mm); Trijicon HD XR (front); no-snag black (rear) (.45 ACP)
- Trigger: 4 lbs., 4 oz. (tested)
- Accessories: Two 9-rd mags. (9mm), 7-rd. mags. (.45 ACP), soft case, cable lock
- MSRP: $4,995
- Manufacturer: Ed Brown Products Inc., 573-565-3261, edbrown.com
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