No difference. Remington has however come out with their "Black Belt" and it will (is I believe) going to be in 185, 185+P and 230 grain loadings of .45acp. While not bonded, it's essentially golden saber/ultimate defense with a belt holding the jacket to the lead to stop jacket separation. According to what I was reading earlier, it will be replacing the golden saber/ultimate defense. Pretty much just an upgrade on an existing bullet.

 

Golden Saber is the old standard round that Remington put out without much success. The Remington Ultimate Defense is a sales gimmick in a shiny 20 round box of over priced renamed Golden Saber ammo, following much in the tradition set by Hornady! Its easier to come up with a sales gimmick than to compete effectively with Speer or Federal.

 

Golden Saber is the old standard bonded round that Remington put out to try to compete with Speer Gold Dot bonded ammo, without much success. The Remington Ultimate Defense is a sales gimmick in a shiny 20 round box of over priced renamed Golden Saber ammo, following much in the tradition set by Hornady! Its easier to come up with a sales gimmick than to compete effectively with Speer or Federal.

There are two diff RGS, one non bonded, the original, & one bonded. The Rem UD is the non bonded RGS. Whether they tweaked it or not, you would have to compare to older designs. Bullet/ammo Manu tweak their designs all the time, they rarely offer them as new & improved if they are selling well.:dunno:

 

I can't tell any difference between the two rounds, although as has been pointed out one Golden Saber round is bonded and the other not.

You can buy twice the amount of Golden Saber for the same price you buy 20 rounds of the Ultimate Defense.

 

I am afraid the 20 round box is going to be the standard for premium pistol ammo in the not to distant future. For this and other reasons I think now is a good time to stock up on SD ammo, remember one day these will be the good old days!

 

You sir are a prophet.

 

I am afraid the 20 round box is going to be the standard for premium pistol ammo in the not to distant future. For this and other reasons I think now is a good time to stock up on SD ammo, remember one day these will be the good old days!

Amen brother!:shocked: cheap ammo has gone the way of cheap gas, never gonna be 2007 again.:dunno: same for reloading, $30/1000 is the new cheap price. I am glad I have been buying over the years, cost avg is the way to go.

 

I do not have info on Ultimate Defense, but there are a couple good comparisons of Golden Saber 45ACP on the Brass Fetcher website.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt43BScUdt0"]45 ACP 185gr JHP Comparison I - YouTube[/ame]

http://www.brassfetcher.com/9mm vs 45/9mm vs 45 ACP.htm

Very interesting stuff.

 

Maybe now the first link will work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt43BScUdt0

 

It's been a few years since I had a chance to speak with a Remington LE rep, and they weren't offering any glitzy commercial packaging at the time.

They were making the HPJ BJHP (Golden Sabre) loads in the standard and bonded variations at the time.

According to the rep (at that time), the bonded versions were produced by pouring flux into the brass jackets before the lead ingot was inserted into the jackets, and the nose cavities were a little more shallow & reshaped to prevent excessive expansion.

He also said that the bonded version wasn't nearly as popular among LE agency customers as the standard round, and that the bonded version had only been produced as a line marketed to LE agencies.

I've read of where some other folks have either called or emailed Remington, asking about the difference between the standard HPJ/GS and the Ultimate Defense, and have reported they've been told the difference is only the packaging.

It would be interesting to try some of the new banded/belted design ('Black Belt') GS loads, at some point. It would be a neat trick for Rem to be able to offer a single bullet design that could be marketed to meets the desires of the agencies wanting characteristics of both non-bonded & bonded.

 

It would be interesting to try some of the new banded/belted design ('Black Belt') GS loads, at some point. It would be a neat trick for Rem to be able to offer a single bullet design that could be marketed to meets the desires of the agencies wanting characteristics of both non-bonded & bonded.

Yes it would be, if the Remington Black Belt design turns out to be competitive with Federal's HST --- a non-bonded design that appears to have remarkable expansion consistency and holds together well even through hard barriers.

 

shinier box with the same golden sabres at a slightly higher cost, (to pay for the nicer box).

 

Sadly, Remington seems to have taken 3rd or 4th place in the self-def. ammo game...they have been trailing the "leaders" for nearly 20 years...I hope they can make a come-back with the new ammo...and that it is not just re-packaged Golden Sabre

 

Sadly, Remington seems to have taken 3rd or 4th place in the self-def. ammo game...they have been trailing the "leaders" for nearly 20 years...I hope they can make a come-back with the new ammo...and that it is not just re-packaged Golden Sabre

What got me into the Golden Saber was tnoutdoors9's tests of the Remington in [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK6KbA-HuZ8"].357sig[/ame].

The 9mm version appears to have equivalent-for-caliber results so if these rounds are lower on the self-defense list "game" it might be due to tests lacking in comparative results.

 

A word association test:

When I hear something described as "Ultimate" or "Extreme", I think "Bull****".

 

A word association test:

When I hear something described as "Ultimate" or "Extreme", I think "Bull****".

Unfortunately, you're not wrong in this case.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBkyvOZ7Awo"]Remington Ultimate Defense Compact Handgun 45 Auto Comparison Tests - YouTube[/ame]

 

Not related, but to name something as "Ultimate" seems to be the Acme of marketing hubris. Gag me with a spoon, please.

The hostesses at my favorite family steak place give a spiel about their "Legendary Margaritas"; someday when I am not supervised by my wife I'm planning to innocently ask the hostess during her spiel "Miss, I'm new in town, What is the legend of your margaritas?

 

Look at lucky gunner tests of this ammo - NG

 

Gold Dots, HST, or Corbon DPX for short barrel

 

Hey, another thread resurrected from 6 years ago.

Nothing's really change in the last 6 years ... aside from ammo shortages and scalped pricing.

I personally wondered if the new commercial Ultimate Defense was just a way for Remington to boost the price while cutting the box size from 25rds down to 20rds. Remember when Remington advertised they gave customers an extra 5rds (25rd boxes) for the same price the other major ammo companies were charging for 20rds? Well, apparently they saw the writing on the wall and decided to go for the bucks, after all.

If someone wants to look at the commercial ballistic testing that uses synthetic gel blocks, keep in mind the advantages of using the synthetic for the testing companies ... but how it's been observed to see results of bullets tending to under-expand and over-penetrate in the clear synthetic gelatin, compared to 10% calibrated gelatin.

Also if you're going to look and compare the LG website's testing of the 230gr Remington .45ACP loads, look at all of them.

Me? I'll continue to use my remaining supply of W-W 230gr RA45T (and some RA45SXT, if think may still be left over), Rem 230gr BJHP/HPJ non-bonded (because I want expansion as well as penetration), and the 230gr HST I was also trying and using before I stopped serving as a firearms instructor/armorer. They all seem to work fine in reported actual conditions. I'll save the supply of W-W RA45TP +P for the larger, heavier .45's I still use from time to time.

Last time we recorded some velocities comparing standard pressure and +P fired out of a short .45 barrel (3.25"), the difference was less than 40fps, but the results in the organic gel block were virtually indistinguishable. Why bother with the increased muzzle blast, felt recoil/muzzle whip and slide velocity for hardly any difference?

I think I still have a box of Speer 230gr GDHP somewhere, but Speer isn't quite as popular out here (finding it), and Speer has a very high opinion of their ammo (reflected in higher cost), and the ballistic results aren't that much different, except maybe for how some pistols may be less tolerant of the nose cavity size and OAL of the round.

Basically, not much has really changed in the last 6 years since this thread was started. Not really.

 

Hey, another thread resurrected from 6 years ago.

Yes. Thank you "Recommended Reading".
I wish there was some way of turning that off.

 

Seven years later I'm still relying on the same tried-and-true Gold Dot, Golden Saber, and HST.

 

The Golden Saber is an excellent bullet. I've always thought the "belted" version was a gimmick because if jacket seoaration occured in the non-bonded version - it was so deep in penetration not to matter.

 

I've been to some various hosted gel test events, one of them being a Remington demo where we spent the day shooting organic gel with a lot of Remington .40 S&W Golden Sabre. The only Golden Sabre bullet that shed its jacket that day was one of the 165gr GS40SWA shots. As you speculated, the jacket was shed approx almost a foot into the gel block.



The rest of the Golden Sabre test shots, whether non-bonded or bonded, into bare gel, 4 layers of denim or windshield glass and cloth-covered gel, kept their jackets intact.

In some of the other hosted gel events I've attended over the years, where some Remington ammo appeared, none of the bullets lost their jackets. Interestingly enough, I do remember a Winchester gel event where one of the 180gr RA40T bullets shed a jacket in the organic gel. Like the 165gr Rem GS above, the jacket was recovered approx a foot inside the gel block.

I've read of it sometimes happening when commercial testing involving the use of synthetic gel has been done. However, I stopped worrying about JHP's losing their jackets in real world conditions a long time ago.

 

I've used 147 Golden Sabroski's for years, they run fine in my 26.17,19,43.

Laquer-sealed primers are a plus.

 

They still make a decent 125gr .38sp snubby load.

 

Indeed. The first time I saw the then-new Speer 135gr +P GDHP tested in a gel event, one of the attendees wanted to see what the 125gr +P BJHP he carried in his 360PD would do in the same 4LD/Gel conditions. The results were remarkably similar, except his 125gr BJHP bullets were badly tarnished and grungy from having been carried for so long.