dubdawgit

It's time for me to ask a question for once. Several buddies have been pestering me about picking up an AK. Never been much of a fan although I'm well aware of their reputation for reliability. I've always thought that I would try to find an Arsenal milled receiver over going with one of the traditional stamped designs, but solid, excellent condition examples are getting rather spendy these days. Two grand for an AK is just too much.

So I'm curious how the Yahoo world would answer; if I decide to get cheap and go with a stamped model, which country of origin/company for the base kit would you see as being the best? And for what reasons do you base this on?

BTW, forget E Germans...almost impossible to find, let alone at halfway sane prices. And pre-bans are definitely out of the financial picture.

As for the "something else": I'm also considering a SIG 556R as an alternative, but that route isn't the "true AK experience", as one of my buds is fond of saying. It's also more than I want to spend, although I have good experiences in the past with the 55x platform. But I've heard of problems with the 556R running the cheap Russian import ammo, which is kind of the point--at least for me--with going 7.62x39 in the first place.

Any recommendations would be appreciated, especially from any AK experts out there.