TTAG published the results of a stress test of the FNH SLP Mk. I in February, and since then I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the reliability of their shotguns. Yes, there are plenty of very happy SLP owners out there, but even among them there’s the often heard refrain. “It runs fine… after the break-in period.” I walked up to FNH’s sales rep and asked him point blank about the reliability issues. His response: “what issues?”
Walt Hasser, assistant product manager for FNH USA, says he’s heard nothing but praise for their shotguns. “We have had some issues with some of the Winchester ammunition” says Mr. Hasser, “but everything else we’ve tried runs just fine.” If you look back to the test, we did indeed use Winchester shotgun ammunition. In the discussion and analysis we indicated that Winchester ammunition appeared to cause more malfunctions than the Remington ammunition we were using alongside Winchester, but malfunctions did appear with both brands. The Mossberg 930 SPX, on the other hand, ran both brands without a statistically significant issue.
In response to our test in particular Mr. Hasser said “it sounds like you got a bad shotgun” and offered to let us try the test again with a different shotgun. Keep an eye out for round two of our testing of the SLP Mk. I.