Lee screwed up a good thing.
I own a couple of these presses bought years ago and do love them for light reloading tasks. The design has always had its faults, such as no finger clearance towards the back of the ram, and the handle being somewhat in the way when the ram is lowered. And of course the limited strength and power.
But I always loved this press's Zen-like minimalist simplicity. No floppy useless primer arm, no afterthought clip-on spent primer catcher, just a very clean & simple design with no gimmicks and very little to go wrong.
Unfortunately, Lee in their infinite wisdom have now decided to violate (as in rape) the very spirit that made this a great product, by adding their "Breech Lock" feature/gimmick to it. Furthermore, it appears Lee is doing this without changing the model number of the press... I interpret that as a total "bye-bye" to the old non-BL version. I guess Lee hopes we will rush out like so many lemmings to spend our money on additional Breech Lock bushings to go on all our dies. I personally was not having any trouble screwing my dies in and out of the simple threaded holes on my older Lee presses; if I wanted speed I'd buy a turret press or a progressive reloading machine.
I gather that other Breech Lock presses made by Lee have a pop-up button that indexes the BL bushing in the proper locked orientation. They left that detail out on this press, so probably they will have people do sizing operations with the BL interrupted threads only 5% engaged and thus permanently damage their soft alloy press frames.
Well I only bought a new one of these to hold in reserve as I drill permanent holes for my older ones in a nice new reloading bench. I don't want to get caught with holes in my bench and no press to fit them somewhere down the line. That being my situation, I guess I'll JB Weld the one bushing they supplied permanently into the press frame and try to forget the bad vibes this whole Breech Lock business sets off for me.
If you feel the same way I do, be aware that the newer version is starting to ship out to customers now but many sellers have not updated their photos or descriptions to reflect the change.
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