[Sturmgewehre]

Ed Brown is about as far from mass produced as it gets. Again, he makes 500 1911's a year. That's 1/4 of what Wilson or Baer turns out a year. Even the relatively new start up Nighthawk cranks out twice as many or more 1911's a year than Brown does.

Brown has long time, many family, smiths that build one gun at a time and not on an assembly line for speed. Each one is built from the highest quality parts made and assembled by highly qualified craftsman. Brown parts are accepted universally as top of the line, and many other well known smiths use his parts in their builds.

If you want absolute perfection, you can't beat Brown.

You hear more about Wilson because he's into volume and glitzy ad's. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a different business model than Brown uses. But Brown goes for quality over quantity, and his guns are truly custom in that they are all completely hand built.

I don't know where you get the notion a "custom" gun has to be built from a bunch of parts made from different manufacturers. Custom, to me, means a gun either built exactly to your specs, or a gun that's built from the ground up with every part hand fitted by a master smith. The former is exactly why I buy Browns.