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Well, I own both. SD for .45 ACP and the 550 for all other pistols. I use a Forster-Bonanza Co-ax press for rifle.
The 550 is not the quicker of the two, in my opinion. Dillon says it is, based on testing of some kind, I suppose, but it depends how you work. If you can get a second person (there had to be some reason I got married) placing bullets while you place cases with your right hand and work the crank with your left, the SD is fast. I've done 200 rounds for a match in 15 minutes working this way. That’s 800 rounds an hour, or one every 4.5 seconds, including a primer tube refill.
The king of the hill for speed is the 1050 with a case feeder and two people operating; one for bullets and primers and the other for the crank and powder and brass hoppers. In a week-long punishment of his dueling tree, a friend and I shot through 1800 rounds of .45 ACP a day (900 each) and reloaded that same 1800 each night in 45 minutes on the 1050. That’s 2250 rounds an hour, if you're keeping count, or an average of one round every 1.6 seconds. I won’t claim this was a relaxed pace; we were trying to see how fast we could make the wheels spin? And the crank arm gets tired and you have to switch out (a wife isn’t so good for this purpose, I’ve found: not so much that she can’t as that she won’t).
I use the Co-ax press for rifle because I fuss too much with rifle rounds at each stage of the loading to really take advantage of anything faster. Of course, I don’t typically shoot 900 rounds of rifle a day. At that rate I’d get 3 or four days per barrel, and I'm not quite that rich.
Nick
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