Daniel Defense H9: The Hudson Reborn and Completely Reengineered
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
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In 2017, Hudson released a new pistol that was the darling of the firearms industry. It purported to offer a radically low bore axis and 1911-style trigger in a striker-fired system that would be fast and simple to use.
In 2019, Hudson went bankrupt, out of money and having started to scavenge parts off returned pistols to fix other customers' broken guns. It was an ignominious end to a product with such potential.
About that same time, Daniel Defense was looking for a way to expand their catalog into the pistol market. They saw Hudson, and it looked like the perfect opportunity to pick up a good design that seemed to have been the victim of management and cash flow problems. So DD bought up the patents and other aspects of the H9 pistol...but when they got a close look at the gun they realized, belatedly, that the whole thing needed to be redesigned.
In the years since, Daniel Defense has been fixing the H9. The fire control system remains fundamentally the same, but with no interchangeable parts - and now actually drop-safe. The exotic forward-mounted unlocking cams on the barrel are gone now, and the accessory rail is moved up enough to allow reasonable use of lights and lasers. The frame is aluminum and shortened for better concealment. The recoil spring system is much stronger, and the slide stop redesigned to prevent the breakages that plagued the original Hudson. Every part of the magazine has been changed, to fit the same 15 rounds into a shorter body and prevent over insertion. The slide is now cut for optics, with four different adapter plates to fit all the common footprints.
Shooting the new H9 side by side with the original Hudson, I think Daniel Defense has kept all the qualities of the design while fixing a lot of the problems it had. The gun does indeed have a lot less muzzle rise than more conventional designs, and the trigger feels quite nice. This is not a Grand MAster's IPSC gun and it is not a subcompact pocket gun. It is a jack of all trades piece that can be carried as well as any service pistol (better than most, thanks to its quite narrow construction) and can hold its own in a variety of competition venues as well.
Developmental Prototypes of the Original Hudson H9:
• Hudson H9 Prototypes &...
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Can't speak for everyone but the "ramblings" are one of the reasons I really enjoy this channel.
Not really 'ramblings' but a deeper explanation of his thoughts which is VERY interesting when followed at that level
Nerdy, rambling, and LARP free. Bless Ian and bless Forgotten Weapons.
You mean how explained the issue specifically? That was tedious though. It's like, who wants to know how a gun works?
@@PiYodTong lots of people.
Ian explains everything to the Nth degree. You are never lacking knowledge on the subject.
I see Daniel Defense improved the drop safety even further by having it not go into battery to begin with. That's a nice touch.
It's not a flaw, it's a feature.
I handled a preproduction year or two ago, legitimately don't understand why anyone even cared to begin with.
I’m hoping they fix that. I got a Hudson just before they went under thanks to Ian’s videos. I’d like to get a DD just to have the comparison myself, but I want to wait for them to fix it first. If they never do, I’ll just see if I can find a used one at a low price.
@@BillWilsonBG The most amazing part about the H9 is how it gets so many opinions out of people who never had an interest in one in the first place
I wonder if it's the same trap a lot of other small designers have fallen into: designing a firearm that's 100% reliable, but only with the batch of ammo they tested. The classic example being, "Why would anyone ever run cheapo steel-case in our fancy gun?"
So it'll perform flawlessly with, say, Federal AE9FP or Speer GDHP 124+P that has the same lot number they used in testing, and anything else takes you to straight to Stovepipe City.
Ian: "I've been rambling a bit there"
Me: "That's... why I'm here"
“They bought the design. Then they showed it to their engineers. And they said “oh no”.
PSA is getting flashbacks to their STG-44 re-design.
Sometimes I think Forgotten Weapons is the kiss of death.
Sad mp5 noises😢
My jaw dropped open at the recoil spring bit. @4:25
@@DSCH4mega oof
I think psa failed because they dont have the engineering department to properly recreate the stg 44
Same with the guys before them
“It’s drop safe because it goes out of battery” that’s when my p320 took offense and exploded on me.
Sig: "...and I took that personally."
The P320 shit was massively overblown and was fixed over ten years ago anyway. Moron.
🙄
Glock wasn't happy with the barrel reference
So DD turned the H9 into every other handgun, but kept the price point of a bespoke design. Great work!
Yeah, you are better off with a Mars Automatic Pistol.
Well took them 4 years to turn it into a normal gun. That costs a lot of engineering money oops
@@sortaspicey9278 In fairness that's not too bad for their first handgun.
The only problem is I have has and still have both and the Hudson outperforms the DD on every aspect , and by the way they did not redesign as much as they say they have
Daniel Defense is also, to be honest, known for Mercedes-like pricing.
"Oh, yes, the star ist twenty thousand. The car is extra."
The Hudson H9 looked cool and different with that large dust cover. It looked a little sci-fi. Daniel Defense fixed the problems, but in doing so made it look like any other 9mm on the market, and at the price of $1,300.00. It has a lot of competition. $200 more and you can have a FK BRNO PSD-C that can convert between 9mm 10mm and 7.5 FK rounds, scratch the itch for a different looking cool gun, and get to shoot the 7.5 FK round with it's interesting characteristics.
Yeah I think aiming for a higher price point is a mistake, but then again this is probably what their bean counters told them they needed to price it at for it make a justifiable profit. That and everything DD makes is expensive.
@@Calvin_Coolage The price is too high for what it is, and on top that its still not functioning well. In this video it didn't hold open two or three times. DD took away it's unique look, and the market is already saturated with very good 9mm pistols options, that work well. I wonder how many guns they'll move, because I'm failing to see the unique value proposition to justify that $1,300 price point.
@@Edmund_Mallory_Hardgrove I don't know how well it's gonna sell either. It doesn't really do anything to win over people who wrote off the H9 design or to people who loved the original H9 either.
The dust cover looks stupid on the Hudson. It never looked good.
@@hellcatdave1 That's a matter of opinion. I liked it. It made the gun look different. So that difference gave it a unique selling proposition over all the other guns that are derivative of the good old 1911.
I recall that Tony Neophytou had a really good tidbit of wisdom when he described his approach to firearms design: He started his designs from a consideration of spring design. Neophytou very wisely points out that the springs in a gun are the "living parts" of the gun. I think what he is getting at is that the springs are the primary energy management components in a gun. Springs absorb and store recoil energy required to chamber the next round and bring it back into battery.
It turns out that if you want a spring to last for many cycles, you cannot design it to be compressed to close to it's yield strength. Basically if you design your spring such that it is close to the yield point of the metal by the time it's fully compressed, you risk fatigue failure of the spring. If you want high fatigue cycle life you basically want to be working at half the stress level for the metal.
This means that you have to allow considerably more storage space for a longer, smaller diameter wire, coil spring that is expected to be working at about 40% of it's yield stress for durable cycling.
I see that in firearms design, there is a tendency to fixate on the mechanical clockwork aspects of a gun and work out the springs later. The springs, appearing to be compliant squishy things look forgiving, but it turns out that it is not difficult to invest a lot of time in clockwork design only to find out that you didn't leave enough space for springs.
You'll see these signs of a struggle in areas like a double wound AK extractor spring which has three strands of wire twisted together before they were wound into a coil spring. They had to reduce the wire diameter to reduce stress in the metal when it deflects, but they also needed 3x the axial force so they had to triple up a small dia wire to get the necessary force without the high stress of larger dia wire.
CAD is great at helping designers lay out clockwork, but it's easy to forget to consider the life of the springs and get lost in the cams and sliders. A complete designer will also use spring design calculator software to see if their springs are working within durable limits, but CAD systems don't usually offer these features directly so springs get forgotten about in many mechanism designs.
Adept designers tend to be clockwork designers. They tend to focus on the phases of motions in cam slider blocks and locking mechanisms. Veteran designers think about dynamic issues like inertia and energy management.
That's a legitimately interesting view on design pitfalls.
Lieutenants think in terms of tactics, Generals know it's all in the logistics.
its also important to remember that you can over build the springs in a system too. This was an issue with the development of the Owen gun, the design team had built a special testing rig to determine the best spring weight for the gun, but the army wanted to insist on increasing the weight because they claimed it would be more reliable. The design team however (correctly) argued that by increasing the spring weight the gun would be LESS reliable as the spring would be too strong and increase the likelihood of the bolt short-stroking and failing to fully eject/chamber
@@WarnockRaffertyincrease your attention span, read it for Christ sake.
Or you just need to understand how to do actual spring math calculations or something I don't know 😂
Cz75: Look what they need to do to mimic fraction of our power
I just added the gamut of CZ military pistols to my collection, and man they were doing things seventy years ago that we still don't get on modern guns.
I'd kill for a smaller CZ-52 with the full DA/SA system of the CZ-50/70 chambered in 5.7 double stack, with an optics mount and dust cover rail.
I think that'd be a real killer on the market.
😂
In fairness, CZ had the benefit of enormous outside investment and support that Hudson and others didn't and don't have.
A lot of CZ's infrastructure that keeps the company competitive to this day was paid for by the government back in the Cold War as the company was basically treated as a state-owned arsenal and they didn't care about profits or return on investment. When CZ went private after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the company had a lot of resources to survive on while they figured out how to become a profitable private company again.
If they brought back the CZ Rami in a polymer frame or just updated it, I think it would do fantastic
Not that CZ hasn't had issues with new designs either. IIRC they had to do a recall on some batches of the early P-07/09s.
Being an early adopter has its price, even with well regarded, well established companies.
See also: SIG P320.
But yeah, CZ 75s are weirdly underrated. They definitely have their fans, but somehow they remain a somewhat niche choice.
It's funny I was just recently wondering why the H9 seemed to be such a controversial gun because I never followed its development, and now suddenly I see Ian on my feed with a video about it LOL. Great video as usual, glad to finally learn about the gun and hear someone who actually explains what all went wrong and the changes instead of just hearing the complaints with no explanation.
Theyre in ur walls theyre in ur walls theyre in ur walls theyre in ur wa
When Ian was with InRange, he and Karl covered the development closely, making a number of videos of the process.
Been watching since I was around 12-13 and now im almost 22. Thanks a lot for years of good content and the endless fountain of knowledge you are
I’m Hudson sir, he’s Hicks.
Game over for Hudson.
@@anthonykarlsson5166 Yeah, but like a total boss!
Somebody wake up Hicks
RIP Bill Paxton
Hudson, run a bypass…
The idea that DD could’ve bought the H9 without their engineers looking at it first is comical
Don't be so sure. When management gets something in their head and they start seeing dollar signs, strange shit happens. I was involved with the sale/purchase of a competitor for 35 billion, sale didn't go through (engineering and software details). Said buyer then had to give the competitor 3.5 billion and come crawling back to us saying "just kidding, we love you guys".....
I can imagine a lot of these problems aren't things you can easily just look at and know it'll be a problem
If you dont think a gun mfr can over estimate the ease of moving a project to market Ask palmetto and the mp44. Or h&k with the sa80 "upgrade"
Not uncommon throughout manufacturing. Not long ago, the company I work for bought the license to manufacture a piece of equipment that our company had no experience with, no way to manufacture without major retooling, and no established distribution for. After several attempts, it just ended up with millions spent and not even a working prototype completed.
As an engineer, I'd be more surprised if they did.
That was a fair number of malfunctions in a relatively small number of rounds.
He had more malfunctions in 2 minutes than I had in my entire pistol competition career.
He had more malfunctions in 2 minutes than I had in my entire pistol competition career. Impressive
My $300 Smith and Wesson has had fewer malfunctions in the 5 years I've been shooting it (at least 2-3k rounds) than this had in a few minutes, and it isn't even an M&P. Seems like a shit gun to me.
Its unacceptable
He didnt want the Hudson to look too good by showing that it could handle more than a few rounds AND lock open so he didnt even do a complete mag on it. Usually like this channel, but major disapproval there.
I always remember that video you did with Carl years ago with Cy and Lauren, talking about stacking tolerance bands and the difficulties they ran into with parts suppliers. That discussion stuck with me and was one of the best illustrations (to me at least) of the real world challenges that manufacturers of complex machines face. No doubt a lot of that is because it was within the context of subject matter that I was deeply interested in. Thanks, as always for what you do!
Best ramble in months. I love the details like balanced parts promote drop safety.
Daniel and the cooler daniel
_"A company that went bankrupt due to issues not directly connected with the quality of the gun."_
WELLL... we could talk about that. The original Hudson H9 was absolutely _rife_ with defects. And the Daniel Defense fell very, _VERY_ short of solving them all.
That was one of the easiest to comprehend explanations of the drop safe and slide velocity issue I have heard
3:49 Hi-Point has legendary customer service and solid durability. Hi-point is the gun that you buy when your grand kids are going to need something to flash at the parole officer 70 years later. Hi-point might have outdated magazines, terrible ergonomics, horrible aesthetics and brutal recoil; but you best be sure that hipoint is meant to last through a lifetime of poor choices.
That should be an advertisement for them
Well, with a product that is so cheaply made it is easy to have good customer service. Someone sends something in with a problem, you just replace it.
So, like a Glock but cheaper?
I have had a couple of HiPoints over the lastb3 decades. I do not argue with buyers, because I understand the practicality of the firearm. However, I believe that a firearms company should build its reputation on the gun, not the customer service. Yes, customer service is awesome, but it makes more sense for a firearm company to be known for good guns.
@@wingracer1614 True, but good customer service is appreciated with every product and there are a lot of companies that utterly fail at customer service even with ostensibly cheaper products. Heck, dealing with microsoft customer service is borderline impossible even when you're trying to do something that costs no money whatsoever.
Man. There personal n under the table he hands and grabs the hudson from is on their A game. He never missed a handoff. Nice work.
It's baffling to me how Hudson thought that people wouldn't mind a 2000 round product lifespan. That's about a years shooting, if you're regularly at the range. I do a box of 50 per week at least 40 weeks per year. Boom, gun finished, 1200 bucks down the drain. Astonishing!
Most people don't have the luxury of shooting that often.
They thought they were selling a safe queen
@@slade9372 Those people don't buy $1200 pistols
I'm so jealous of your lifestyle 🥲
@slade9372 well considering the number of handguns Hudson got back for repair I'm guessing you are wrong
I personally think that in modifying it for practicality with the rail, they really killed a lot of the aesthetic flow of the pistol, and what made the H9 look so interesting. I'm not sure it's a trade off I would of made. I mean, i get it, but there's lots of pistols i'd rather be buying if i just wanted a practical gun.
To my dumb eyes, the muzzle movement of the original H9 was noticeably less than the DDH9.
DD seems to have "glockified" the design to ensure safety, reliability, and ultimate blandness.
Hudson, with ALL its faults appeared to be attempting something different. Maybe worthlessly different, but I'm thinking there might be something to the secret sauce.
I wonder if spring being lower on the original one made a difference. Also, the original one uses steel frame which makes it a bit heavier.
To my eyes as well
Daniel Defense... We make guns you would normally only pay one third for.
..wasn't the original Hudson intergrally suppressed???
Youre thinking of the sico maxim 9@@cbroz7492
@@cbroz7492 you're probably thinking about the Maxim 9.
@@cbroz7492 Not at all. You must be thinking of the SilencerCo Maxim 9..
@wrxguyusa ..guess I was..thanx
It's a tad unsettling that a new review sample has to be first round smacked into battery and doesn't hold open on empty. And multiple malfunctions in 2 mags.
They bought a pig in a poke and it's not clear that 4 years of re-engineering made a better mouse trap.
On the plus side, at least Ian let us see those malfunctions. A lot of gun reviewers would have edited out that footage.
@@williamwallace9826Ian is a good guy.
Agreed. And I would have thought that was a real issue that deserved to be discussed. This is an expensive gun that is put forward as a competition / self defense gun.
6:17 bro said 👉👈🥺
😂😂😂😂
On the Hi-Point ramble: It doesn't matter how many rounds you put through it, if your Hi-Point breaks, they'll fix it. Fuck buying a new one. This is probably exaggerated, but the anecdote I've heard is one of their reps saying "You can lay it out on a set of train tracks and let it get smushed, and we'll fix what we can and replace what we can't."
At the end of the day, their goal is to make affordable firearms that'll do what you need when you need it, and excellent warranty service is part of that ethos.
as much as their guns suck if every other gun company had half the dedication to their craft that Hi Point has then we'd be in a much better world
@@MangasColoradas941 I mean it really depends on how you define "suck". They're generally the most reliable things at their price point. Yeah they're bulky and you might get one that has some occasional malfunctions, but for the purpose of "I need a gun on a budget for an emergent situation" they do exactly what they need to. When Earl walks right through that restraining order, a Hi-Point will keep *you* out of intensive care.
I mean, they have the ergonomics of a 2x4, but I'd trust one with my life or even my family's lives.
The only nice thing about the DDH9 was the full refund I got after the gun didnt work and fell apart within 250 rounds.
Damn, I have been exposed as a rock dweller
Ditto
@@stitch626aloha 🪨🪨🪨🪨👀🪨🪨🪨
Does it have a hinge like Patricks house?
It happens, man.
Home is where my Hi-Power is.
Taking brass to the face is a small price to pay being Ian's camera man. Dream job
can't complain too much ;)
I really appreciate your detailed, yet concise, descriptions of the inner mechanics of various firearms in your videos. I was a certified handgun instructor and amateur gunsmith before I lost my vision, in addition to my law-enforcement work, so listening to your videos brings back a much needed sense of nostalgia and also satisfies the "nerdy gun nut" side of my personality. Keep it up!
The H9 is like the single mother of pistols. It is on its second baby daddy that is a hot mess and people keep saying no, I can save it.
"oh no. Oh no. Oh no, that's bad" 2:46
Kool-aide man
*OH YE……OH NO OH NOOOOOO!*
I need this cut into a gif.
Why are you timestamping 3:13 when he says it at 2:43?
@@SolidusLightning777 my bad, was what the app suggested
I was actually hearing that set to music.
"Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no."
I find the magazine changes really interesting - it seems like magic that they managed to increase the capacity by 2, while also shortening and keeping them to some extent interchangeable. Wow!
"For engineering reasons, we've had to almost completely redesign the mechanicals of the gun." "Oh, so we're keeping the ergo and the aesthetics?" "Yeah, not so much."
Agreed. Looks nothing like Hudson H9 internally and externally but we’ll keep the name.
Most important quote from this video: “…it’s not an Alien, but…”
Man I was about to buy an H9 before my old car went. Glad I missed that bullet.
It is awesome when you can take what you are talking about to the range. Thank you.
Hudson...always make sure your development and marketing teams are on the same page.
For real. To go from an absolute darling in the gun community after ShotShow to going out of business is such an unbelievable sequence of missteps and errors in judgement. What a shame.
@@SpiderGeometry From Shotshow to sh1tshow!
More like: Hudson, trying to run before learning how to walk. The concept was good, as this Daniel Defense H9 proves, but oh man, did Hudson f*** up. Selling a gun that is essentially still in the Beta stage and ignoring all the problems is already a bad thing. But then to grenade your sales by announcing an aluminium version of the same gun must take first price for worst decision ever. And it's a shame: Cy and Lauren Hudson seemed really nice people, but they simply had no business sense.
I was on the marketing team. I knew the engineers. It wasn't our fault. We advised against every bad decision and we were ignored at every turn. The aluminum frame announcement was a terrible idea. I begged for it not to happened. I had just built the e-store for mags and merch, and we made huge strides in getting holster makers to make H9 holsters available on day 1. That has never done before at that point, and I was quite proud of that work. I wanted the announcement at 2018 SHOT to be that the H9 was available and shipping, the e-store is up with merch and mags, and that we have 3rd party holsters available....but my idea was trashed so we could announce the H9a. The H9a didn't even exist. I had to make all my H9a graphic design work using stylized CAD drawings because we didn't even have a prototype for photographs. All we had was a CAD drawing and a product logo. We got some prototypes in literally 2 nights before SHOT 2018 began. I took a bunch of H9a photographs and photoshopped for 2 days straight without any sleep before I flew out to Vegas. The prototypes were test fired for the first time during those two days and nobody even knew if they would fire. About 75% of them did, and those went out to SHOT 2018 for the "Big" announcement.
Thank you Ian, very cool!
Thank you, Ian. The H9 and the Remington R51 are two on the guns that made me realize modern "gun reviewers" can be as full of crap as the magazine gun reviewers of the past. The UA-cam gun channels praised the H9 when it came out. The company went out of business, in part, because of the avalanche of non working returns. They also had a very short service life. 2,000 rounds is ridiculous. Many of the same UA-cam reviewers praised the Springfield Armory Prodigy. It had tons of issues, too. "Buyer beware" has never lost its relevance through time.
For a while I reviewed a non-gun-related product in a non-video format, and was as honest as I could be. But I soon learned that others might not see what I felt was acceptable similarly. Nor could I do more than speculate what long-term results might be beyond comparing them to what I'd found from other items I'd tested. Even in open conversations with several others doing the same work there were sometimes problems which none of us had discovered no matter how diligently we tried as well as problems that only arose later in long-term testing. And there was always a question of whether all of us were getting the random samples or hand-picked ones which nobody on our end could know for sure.
Tldr don't blame the reviewers or distrust them out-of-hand, but do understand that only extensive long-term testing of actual normal production items used in real-world conditions will give you the truth, and you might be wise to wait till then to make your purchasing decision. Semper Caveat Emptor
Ian also praised the H9 when it came out. It was a rare product that was doing something truly new and it was a new company with founders that seemed like they were passionate. It was a good story and most people wanted to see them succeed. The extent of the parts breakages weren't known until after they went under. Most reviewers don't have the time to run 2k rounds through every gun.
@@P_RO_ same with cars. when they test m , all is great.(well, on some cars) But only a 100.000 km test and consumer experience can tell how the car is really. I would never buy a car-or a gun- the first year. let other people test it.
There’s a reason why first pistol recommendations are almost always a Glock. Maybe an M&P, too
Watch the new product videos for fun, not for recs
@P_RO_ I do product reviews on my podcast, "The 2nd is For Everyone podcast." I'm also a co-host on the Firearms Insider's Gun and Gear Review Podcast. We review and discuss products on our weekly podcast. There's a difference between honest reviews and making an advertisement for a product. My fellow host actually uses the products they review and give their honest perspective and feedback. There's pros and cons because we understand that listeners may be purchasing life-saving equipment based on our experiences. We've had products with issues, and we've contacted the manufacturer, telling them the issues we've had. We tell our listeners those issues and how they were handled by the manufacturer. Many of the UA-cam gun reviewers won't do any of these things. Many people watching firearm reviews want positive reinforcement of products they have already purchased. I want people to have good information, and the manufacturer's reputation comes second.
As someone who might be interested in owning one of the "new and improved" versions of these things, I think it's funny how Ian spends like 25+ min of the vid explaining all the changes the DD engineers made to it to make it better and more reliable, only to then have it hiccup a bunch on its 1st mag when he goes out to demonstrate it lol.
Gosh, you're so informative Ian. I had no idea Hudson's had such issues!
The company didn't survive long enough for the deeper problems to show themselves.
I feel like the kind of people who would want this pistol already have the P01 (probably cajunized). But those who don’t like DA/SA or hammer fired guns would welcome it less the price tag.
In the process of making it better, they made it like every other striker fired pistol. It doesn’t look like the system is substantially different enough compared to anything else to have the low muzzle flip you guys experienced before.
If they kept the sprint where it was originally I bet it would have been better.
I think that the best part of your vids is the rambling Ian (history and R&D behind the firearms) im not a gun person at all, but u make whatever u talk about very informative and intresting!
I once made the decision to try to put serious rounds through a hi-point 9mm, however I gave the idea up after the first couple mags when I was reminded how unpleasant the hi-point 9mm is to shoot and decided that ammo would be much better wasted elsewhere. I have run 600 rounds through a hi-point .40 over the span of 2 range sessions. It got quite hot and the one pin in the frame kept backing out. Also had numerous jams for anyone who's curious.
This channel is amazingly consistent and therefore very comforting, thank you for your content its a blessing to this world
I remember getting my OG H9 during the 600$ bankruptcy sale and I was satisfied at that price for an interesting eclectic pietol. 1200 was always too much for an unproven product that was quickly found to have durability issues by competition shooters.
low bore axis and straight pull trigger in a striker platform is the selling point I think
The jams and failures to fire are merely sauce for the goose
Great opening buddy😁 Love from Aussie👊
The hudson story holds another good example of the osbourne effect. Osbourne computer's failure is generally atrributed to the sales of their first product falling off a cliff and all cash flow drying up when they announced an improved model before it was ready. Hudson of course, did the same thing with their aluminum announcement.
Thanks for the this video to continue the story. You and Karl did a good job on video on the development of the Hudson, your talk with Cy and Lauren etc.
Kind of reminds me of the SA-80 story, where HK redesigned most of the gun to make it actually good.
There's a difference, and a significant one. The Hudson H9 was a fundamentally well thought out, innovative and high potential product crippled by financial difficulties resulting in lack of R&D to perfect it. It's not a bad product. It's a good prototype, marketed as a product.
The SA-80 had the backing of the entire UK government, and still managed to be terrible. In fact even after the HK fix it still continued being terrible. Everything in the original gun is just bad.
@@horvathbenedek3596 Yeah just because it runs well now doesn't mean it isn't still a heavy, unergonomic piece of shit that gets outclassed by every other intermediate military bullpup ever fielded.
What HK did is probably better described as making the gun "not that bad".
The Hudson is a perfect example of how a good idea can be crippled from a lack of engineering input for the thousands of lessons learned from the past.
It would be an exceptional pistol if it was competing against a Colt 1902.
As a pistol entering the market in the 2000's, the design earned its place in the market as well as the reaction of the DD engineers.
Yes, but from the video of Ian shooting the two, the original seems more reliable, despite it's short lifespan before some piece breaks!
That was a scary number of malfunctions for a $1200 pistol.
Reliability on the Daniel defense one was very unimpressive
Maybe it just needs breaking in.
@@Hibernicus1968 A $1300 pistol really shouldn't require a break-in period...
@@Cakeyflour In a perfect world, no, but _all_ new products have bugs to be worked out. _All_ manufacturers face a learning curve when manufacturing something new. This is why it has been received wisdom for my whole lifetime that you don't by the first year production of a new model car; you're going be beta testing the product. That's life in the real world.
@@Cakeyflour One could argue that higher end and expensive pistols are usually made to tighter tolerances and are more prone to require a break in period.
@@AxLWakeTighter tolerances should mean less need for breaking in, not more. Tighter clearances without tighter tolerances, then you'll need a break in.
Tighter clearances does not mean higher quality product. It means tighter clearances, and what that implies about the product is a case by case thing.
It's hard to believe you have not done a video on the tech 9
You can really see the difference in engineering in how each pistol ejects brass. DD seems to eject always in the same way, consistent action. Original Hudson all over the place.
any malfs? nah? then until there is a problem there is no problem.
LOL I love the fact that you left the humor parts in the video. You guys are awesome! 😉
i dont know. the DD H9 dosent have the same vibe for me that the original has
The new one completely lost the vibe of the original. The redesigned trigger guard and dust cover no longer have the Sci Fi vibe of the original.
This has 100% made people less interested, myself included.
Yeah the original h9 looked like something out of a scifi show. The DD h9 looks pretty standard. They should have just done a Glock clone or went for a HK p7 knockoff as the patent has expired. Whoop whoop
"I'm rambling." That's why we watch your videos, Ian :)
I got to rent an H9 at an indoor range a few years ago, and my limited experience with it was extremely pleasurable. It felt so smooth to shoot and I loved it.
I should stay under a rock. So there will be more forgotten weapons to be found
I held one of the original Hudson pistols , it really feels good n comfortable in the hand I almost bought it n kinda regret not buying it, however I was waiting to see if they got there problems resolved , instead as we know they went out of buisness, I love that Daniel Defense has bought the rights to this handgun, I can see buying one in the future once im sure the bugs are worked out
Daniel Defense H9, You can drop this one! Should be their tag line.
The Preto Principle applies to to every fraction of the job. I looks like Hudson got it to 96% and those last few percent take a lot to finish off. Nice review, thanks.
@ 0:10... Wait, where's Ian's body? All I can see is his head, floating hands, and a gun on the table!
Lol it's been 40 years but I will never forget the day I went to my first grade friend's house and he had a brand new outfit of camo pants and tshirt and wanted to play hide and seek immediately and when I got done counting he was about 10 feet away, just lying down in a well mowed suburban lawn, and then was very annoyed that I found him so quickly.
classic
Gun Jesus's newest miracle is invisibility. 😂
@ all you can see is the stache, the goatee, and the hair hanging in the air. Nothing else of him😂
What a John Cena moment
the H9 has been one hell of an interesting story from both a business and engineering perspective.
Ramble all you want, this is an unusually live and candid perspective on an aspect of mechanical devices that we almost never get to hear about in the now.
A shame the original makers/designers were never able to work the kinks/quirks out for themselves but i'm hoping the DD changes will give it a second lease on life, the general outline of the changes sound neat (if expensive and time consuming that's probably going to sting on the bottom line somewhere before this video is done).
Steyr M9 had the best “low bore axis” geometry, IMO
PSA Rock 5.7 has a nice, low bore axis, coupled with a low-recoil round. The Beretta PX4 series also has a fairly low bore axis, and the rotating barrel system mitigated recoil nicely, especially in 9mm.
PX4 mentioned. Really cool and underrated pistols.
The Beretta has an extremely high bore axis, you on the same page? Lol
i saw a steyr m9 a few years back and thought it looked really cool and felt really comfortable, then i watched some shooting reviews and said "H e ll NO!" what a pos.
@@nn-dj2nu I bought a Steyr M9A2, liked how it felt in the hand... except it had the problem of occasionally not returning to battery under use. It would be like an eighth of an inch from that.
Dunno if some specific type of lube on the rails would've solved that, but this is apparently a documented problem, might actually be a design flaw regarding however the rails work. The Steyr was literally the *ONLY* pistol I had around that wouldn't return to battery on its own if you slightly pushed it out while loaded.
So yeah, I sold it, not sure I can recommend it, and that's pretty dang disappointing.
Great background story and side by side comparison. Loved seeing all the tiny ways Hudson went wrong. I hope Daniel Defense does well with it.
With all due respect to the guys at Daniel Defense, but Hudson's original design was way cooler.
A weapon DD wants us to forget about 😅
Sooooo, they turned it into a regular boring pistol that actually wo...
... oh, nevermind.
I’ve never heard the Mauser Luger story, you should make a video about that one day.
Congratulations to Daniel Defense. You bought a pistol (design) a had to redo more than 95% of it. Looks like the only thing you got any use out of was the H9 name. I hope you got a really good price for so small a purchase.
Gaston Glock was a Genius. Nobody can beat his stuff.
It's reminiscent of the issues the UK had with the SA80 and the changes HK engineers made.
The tiny differences and the understanding of materials that make a huge difference to the end product
As I understand it, HK took one look at the guts of the SA80 and promptly dumped them out onto the ground, replacing with the guts of a G36.
@ScottKenny1978
Funnily enough Ian did a video on the changes made
ua-cam.com/video/js4d8c7KzCQ/v-deo.htmlsi=-WAWSEJy8uiQ9nHt
Ramble away, Ian, this is my favourite part of the videos.
Lol, hudson was struggling because they're trying to make something inovative, DD just make regular handgun with inovative pricing
Nice! I just watched Ian's video about how to fail at making a pistol and had commented that it's a shame the H9 wasn't picked up by a real firearms company and a few days later this video drops! Wow! This is really cool! Too bad I'm in California and we'll never see this pistol, but that's cool that some innovative design didn't die with it's parent company!
Note that in the brief range test of both guns, the original Hudson had no malfunctions or hiccups and the DD had about half a dozen.
And the Hudson probably has 1000 rounds or more through it.
I was able to handle the original recently and was very impressed with the fit and finish. I'm glad someone was able to carry the torch for a great concept and design.
Buy this because you want an H9. For the money I can think of better, more reliable options. Great content as always.
A truly exceptional video Ian. Very educational!
They might feel similar, but they sure don't look similar in firing, Ian. The Hudson looked to have noticeably less apparent muzzle flip. This new DD version has lost a fair bit of the secret sauce that made the Hudson so interesting and seems much more "just another pistol". Seems to need more work, also, unless it was a matter of that particular ammo not playing well with it. That damned Hudson just always looked so good. Pity about all the issues that surrounded them.
Neat pistol design. Buddy of mine has one. It has been back to DD three times because of FTF issues. It has spent far more time in transit back to the manufacturer than it has at the range. DD has been responsive but they never fixed anything when they had it…all three times.
Thanks Ian , always loved the original Hudson….almost bought one at Nations Gun Show in chantilly, VA back in 2018 , but something told me it wasn’t ready yet…so I waited then they disappeared….glad DD brought it back …
28:30 The recording curse is a real thing!
2:42, a storm of memes will rise from this clip.
I’m SO here for the rambling, keep it up 🫡
ah yes, when the gun costs more to shoot then the ammo at 1000 rounds, $1.20 for each shot if it makes it to 1000
Normally this is a potentially useful metric, but 9x19 is a huge cost outlier. I can get 9x19 for 14c/round, so does that mean any 9mm pistol over $140 is a bad deal?
@@ForgottenWeapons Where are you getting 9x19 for 14¢/round? Can you share which site to google?
@@ForgottenWeapons Where? Lowest I have found in the last two years is 18c/rd.
I just looked it up on Ammoseek before replying
@@LoneRanger869 Heck, I live in the central Florida area and am able to purchase 9x19 PARA for 18c/round at retail mom & pop gun stores.
"hopefully that made a little bit of sense..." Yes I'm an engineer and it made perfect sense. The way you said "there's no moment" leads me to believe you have a background in engineering. I've read that some inertia devices were incorporated in the original Remington XP-100 pistol to make it drop safe and likely devices like this are used in other bullpup designs.
Ian is an engineer
So... the original dies at 2000 rounds, and the new one malfunctions a couple times per mag?
might not have passed the break in period yet.
It's really pretty sad when the "fixed" version of your pistol can't make it through a magazine without some kind of malfunction.
@@anthonyknight170 A $1200 handgun shouldn't need a break in period.
@@kodiakkeith and you base that on what exactly? The price? Are you an engineer?
Some guns simply have more forgiving tolerances than others when new. That is a fact. If it still does the same after 100-150 rounds I'd say it shit until then I'll reserve my judgment.
@@anthonyknight170 do you need a published peer reviewed study or something? Based on the fact that gun people just know when a gun is to much money and not reliable enough. IF you take the time to read reviews of guns and go shooting some yourself, you would understand that what kodiakkeith said is true. For example there tons of guns in the $400-600 price point that are dead nuts reliable.
Figured DD would have fixed all of the reliability issues at this point. I see they have not...
Seems like the H9 still has issues Daniel didn't fix based on chambering the first round and not locking back after the last round.
Or you know, it's brand new and hasn't been shot before.
Thank you for doing this comparison. I've been curious about the differences for awhile.
My takeaway: The DDH9 locks open on an empty OGH9 magazine. Its own magazines? Not so much.
I'm waiting for that Hi-Point H9 Ian just promised us.
Grabbed on of these on sale recently and absolutely love it. Had a similar break in period to my FNs and once broke in it has ran flawlessly and shoots great.
I know its popular to hate on this gun (and everything in general these days it seems) but i have nothing but good things to say about the H9. Its comfortable, shoots well, and has been accurate and reliable.
If they can get the price down to the $1k area id say its a hell of a contender in the "carry but still fun to shoot" space.
They simplified the design but somehow made the gun 100 dollars more expensive than the original H9? Amazing
Probably cheaper once you factor 5 years of pandemic inflation
@@ForgottenWeapons*Money printing and Government intervention
@@ForgottenWeapons But we're also accounting for the fact that the gun still doesn't work