u/astrovegas

Let's start by saying I don't live in a state that requires the magazine disconnect. If you do, then you can skip the rest of this.

Sportsman's Warehouse ran a Memorial Day special where you could get the Echelon 4.5F for $399. The strange thing was it had a loaded chamber indicator and a magazine disconnect, but still came with 17 and 20 round magazines. For that price I didn't mind, so I got it.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the magazines would not drop without physically pulling on them. Since I was looking to get into competitive shooting, that was a no go. I need to drop the magazine with one hand while reaching for a new magazine with the other hand.

I did a little research, and found one video on YouTube that had instructions on how to remove the magazine disconnect. It's not very good because the guy had already removed his. He just showed you where it was located and what he did to remove it. That was enough for me to try, so I did and successfully removed the part. Now, the magazines drop out with gravity only when you press the release, and you can be using your other hand to pull a new magazine instead of prying out the empty one.

The only thing is that it looks to be pretty hard to put it back in. Not impossible, but difficult. I don't plan to reinstall unless I run into function problems, but for now I'm happy with the new setup. If I run into any issues, I'll update this post.