Things that are good: Tango Down slide-stops

As I continue on Project Lone Wolf, I want to take a moment and talk about one of my favorite, and most important Glock parts. The slide stop/release/whatever. There are all sorts of different options for the slide stop on a Glock, but the two available from the factory sometimes leave a little bit to be desired.

Tango Down slidestop

To understand why the Tango Down slide stop is so good, you have to first understand what’s wrong with both of the factory Glock designs. Before we continue, if you’re a super hardcore operator bro who never uses the slide stop to do reloads, you can probably skip this post. However, if you do your slidelock reloads by hitting the slide stop, welcome! This post is for you. Now, back to the good stuff. The factory lever on the regular Glock is a decent design. It’s just a little small. I have big hands, so I’ve never had any trouble using it, but sometimes if my hands are sweaty or it’s raining, I’ve had problems. It’s just small enough that under adverse conditions like that my thumb can slide off without dropping the slide. Shooters with smaller hands have issues reaching it at all.

Glock “solves” this problem with their extended/competition slide stop:

glock extended slide release

That little bump at the end makes it accessible to pretty much any hand size, and makes it nearly impossible for my hand to slip off it when I need to hit it. But it also creates problems of its own; if you have freakish truckasaurus hands like me, it’s really easy for your support hand to contact the slide stop when you’re firing. This will either cause the gun to go to slide lock early, or to not go to slide lock at all, depending on how your hand hits it. That sucks. It sucks on a competition gun because it will jack up a stage, and it would suck even more on a fighting gun, because it might get you literally killed in the streets and/or by ninjas. In all seriousness though, having the gun go to slidelock when it’s not supposed to, or not go when it is are bad things that we don’t want.

Enter the Tango Down slidestop. It’s the same length as the factory Glock part, but it’s profiled out from the slide a little bit further. So my support hand doesn’t contact it during normal firing, but the extra width makes doing slidelock reloads a lot easier. Here are two really good reloads and one terrible reload using a gun with the Tango Down slidestop:

Bottom line? I think these things are great. Every Glock and Timberwolf I own wears one, because for my dollar it’s the best Glock slide stop solution on the planet. I like them so much that I actually buy them out of my own pocket.

11 Comments

  1. I actually accidentally prematurely locked the slide back a couple times with these. Strange, think support hand slipped and pushed it up while cycling.

  2. Looking for the Tango Down Slide Stop, I found one that was a Vicker’s Slide Stop at the Tango Down site; and then found a “Tango Down Slide Stop” at Brownells. The same part or two different parts?
    Thanks for the help,
    David

  3. Ive got the Glock competition extended slide stop on my Glocks. I’ve never accidentally hit them. Maybe it’s because I’m left handed. ;^)

  4. CALEB NO.

    Everybody knows that improperly using the slide stop as a slide release will make your gun blow up right after it jams, probably during a ninja attack. This technique will also give you away to assailants as a gamer– and those assailants know there’s “no timer on the street.” It is a fine motor skill, completely unlike aligning your sights/pulling the trigger/releasing a mag, and you will thus be unable to do it under stress. And don’t bother me with that gamer nonsense about how matches are stressful. It’s not the same thing– and I can say this from my authoritative experience of BOTH not having shot any matches, AND not having been in any gunfights.

    There is only one proper way to release the slide. And no, it’s not the way that you’ve trained to do, can do every time, that is fastest, and that every serious competitor does. It’s the way I tell you to, damnit.

    ZERO out of ten. Would never even remotely consider operating with.

    … okay, yikes, that hurt to write. I gotta admit my M&P has spoiled me on the whole slide-release thing, since it goes ahead and chambers a round for me when I slap in a fresh mag. A good thing, too, since that slide release is small and slippery and there don’t seem to be any good aftermarket options (any chance you’ve got a suggestion on that front?). Of course, my freakishly small hands mean the OEM Glock extended release is perfect for me for when I do rock one of Gaston’s plastic fantastics.

    Thanks for the good gouge so I can point my normal-sized friends with a solution for their “premature release” woes!
    (nope, not gonna apologize for that one)

  5. MattL:
    No need for an extended release on the M&P. After inserting mag the support hand swivels into position with the thumb Always swiping the slide lock just in case it didn’t auto-release. Trained that way on 1911s and has never failed me on the M&P.
    Great rant though!!!

  6. MattL:
    No need for an extended release on the M&P. After inserting mag the support hand swivels into position with the thumb Always swiping the slide lock just in case it didn’t auto-release. Trained that way on 1911s and has never failed me on the M&P.
    Caleb’s method is much faster and more reliable than removing the support hand to grab the slide and possibly slip from sweat or blood.
    Great opening rant!!!

    1. Thanks for the tip, but that’s actually the technique I use. And it works perfectly on my 1911 that sports a somewhat extended slide release. Can’t make it work worth a darn on my M&P, though. So it’s a good thing I don’t have to worry about doing it!

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