REVIEW: TARAN TACTICAL INNOVATIONS MAG BASE PADS

I may have a thing for black and red as a color combination. It is clear on our logos, patches, my Jeep, and even my Glock. My daily carry is a Glock 19 in black with a Silencerco barrel and Unity Tactical trigger. However, the main thing I love about it, is the little bit of rogue the red Taran Tactical Innovations (TTI) Base Pads add. The colors are bright and look great as an accent.

The US made Base Pads are CNC machined from billet aluminum and hard anodized in a variety of colors. The concept is that they add weight to magazines so mags drop free for easier and faster reloads. The TTI Base Pads are very easy to attach and detach from the magazine without specialty tools or devices. Above and beyond simple aesthetics, you can add more round capacity to your load out with a simple swap. The number of rounds you may need in a gun fight is not always up to you. If the person shooting at you has a set number, it would behoove you to have even just one more. Keep in mind that is ignoring all the shot placement and caliber talk and using just raw numbers, but I will take what advantages I can get.

The small Taran Tactical Innovations Base Pads take my capacity to 18+1 while the larger pads create a slight cant and take you to 23+1. Being the curious fox that I am, when I saw the wording on the website saying that the large pads “will cause cant”, I went ahead and ordered them just to see how bad it was. Upon installation, you can clearly see it is pretty drastic. While it didn’t interfere with the operation of my pistol or mag, it did toss my reloads into sideways off angle land. The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) is you can run it, but I think they are spot on with the advice of going with the smaller pads for my Glock.

They even the Base Pads versions that do not add magazine capacity, which can be an asset to your load out. How many times have you had to reach up and help the magazine out on a reload? Sometimes when you shoot, a lot things get dirty or your environment likes to help in its own way by making the smooth run not so smoothly. The TTI Base Pads, while not adding excessive weight, do add enough weight that dropping a mag is a smooth operation. Their patented push-pin method of locking the pad on the mag had me skeptical at first, but they have yet to fail me. When I first started using them, I found myself checking on their placement after every few mag changes, but I gave up after a while and have had zero issues.

Since TTI knows how hard people can be on mags, the hard anodized finish on the Base Pads ensures they can take a beating when you dump them on the floor. Even after frequent drops, I see little scratching on them and they still look great. I hav seen several folks with customized versions, but my email to TTI did not get a response prior to publishing this on if they did that themselves or it is an aftermarket change. The Taran Tactical Innovations Base Pads range in price from $29.99 to $42.99 depending upon the size and finish. The pads are IDPA legal and fit the USPSA, IPSC, and IDPA boxes. If you are thinking about trying some out, I do recommend you pick up more than one at a time as their website offers a discount on orders of two or more. After personally using and testing them, I can solidly recommend the TTI Base Pads – not just for aesthetics – but functionality as well.