Little Ghoulish Glock: Glock 43 Slides from Grey Ghost Precision

Last year, Grey Ghost Precison launched a line of custom Glock 17 and 19 slides and barrels; rather than using original factory slides or bulk blanks produced by a third-party manufacturer, they built them from scratch. The team at Grey Ghost did all the measuring, testing, and fitting for themselves — their new SPG43 Glock 43 slide is no different.

Because we have a preproduction slide, there’ll undoubtedly be some differences between what you see here and what you see in stores. We’ll note these anticipated changes as we go along.

Research, development, testing, evaluation, and production are all done in-house at Grey Ghost's Tacoma, Washington, facility.

When the Glock 43 and later Gen5 Glocks were released, many decried the lack of forward serrations. That complaint is addressed with these slides. The Grey Ghost Precision SPG43 slides will first be offered in two distinct patterns, one with sloped cutouts, and the other with a diamond checkered pattern.

At least at the time of this writing, Grey Ghost Precision is the only large manufacturer, aside from Glock, producing Glock 43 slides. Each slide starts out as a block of American-made billet 17-4PH stainless steel. All critical dimensions of the SPG43 slides are machined to tolerances as tight as 0.003 inch.

Our example features a Grey Ghost Precision barrel; some aesthetics may differ from our preproduction sample by the time it hits the shelf. Like many aftermarket barrels, it’s constructed from 416R stainless steel. Instead of polygonal rifling, the Grey Ghost Precision barrel utilizes 1/16 twist button-type rifling, rocking a chamfered match crown.

Though any but the smallest of specialized silencers looks quite ridiculous on the diminutive Glock 43, we’re still holding out hope that Grey Ghost offer a threaded version in the future … because, reasons.

Though the slides are tailor-made to nest perfectly with the corresponding Grey Ghost Precision G43 barrel, an OEM barrel will drop in, as well. The same goes for other factory parts. The initial SPG43 upper offerings from Grey Ghost Precision will only include stripped slides, but barrels and complete slides will be available in the future.

Precision fit, with OEM parts? We’ll give that a go. As promised, OEM parts dropped into the SPG43 slide with no need for filing or other fitting. We remind you that this won’t necessarily be the case when paired with other aftermarket parts, tolerance stacking being a potential issue.

“With the need now more than ever to rely on your carry pistol, the decision was obvious for us to develop an option for the G43,” said Grey Ghost Precision Vice President of Firearms, Jason Curns. “We take great pride in providing products that meet the demands of our customers, and are confident that the new SPG43’s look and functionality will more than exceed expectations.”

Our example is Cerakoted in, of course, gray. Production models will be available in Black Nitride or Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) in various colors.

With respect to making the slide red-dot-ready, that may be in the cards down the line. Though some third-party machinists are eager to tool up Glock factory factory slides for a micro red-dot sight (MRDS), the fact is that the width is just a tad too narrow for a precise fit with most of them. But a Dueck Defense RBU for a Glock will fit; a Leupold Delta Point Pro looks large even on a full-size Glock 17 and absolutely massive on a Glock 43. So we did it anyway.

It looks ridiculous,the height-over-bore is overly high, and it’s harder to conceal — but boy is it fun on the range. Before hitting the range, we removed removed the plastic plastic OEM sights (production models should ship without sights) and swapped them for a set of Ameriglo Spartans. We didn’t conduct any formal accuracy testing, but we certainly didn’t see any decrease in accuracy with the SPG43. It functioned exactly as you’d expect: boringly reliable.

As we see more third-party options for the single-stack baby Glock, perhaps we’ll hit a point where an entire pistol can be assembled without the aid of any OEM pieces. We’re already there with the 9mm Gen3 guns, and the popular G43 would make sense to be next in the line.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Grey Ghost Precision's G43 slides were manufactured by a third-party vendor, Aero Precision. This is not the case and the story has been, stating the slides are manufactured in-house, by Grey Ghost Precision.