RCBS Matchmaster

This is by far the dispenser on the market. I’ve had the other 2 RCBS dispensers currently on the market. I’ve also had the current Hornady. I bought them all at the same time and this thing blew them all out of the water. They’re ok but slow. This sucker is fast. And someone said in the other reviews that this thing doesn’t auto dispense on a custom load. This has NOT been true for me. This thing rocks. Accurate. And fast. It’s expensive but we’ll worth the price if you test drive the other dispensers on the market.

Very accurate and fast by far

This is my second one. First eventually stripped the plastic gears on the charge tubes. Second just never turned back on. Over priced china. Yes it was great when it worked but reliability is horrible.

I used this to throw 10.5 grain charges of Trail Boss powder for subsonic loads. This is a difficult powder to dispense because the flakes tend to clump together and it does not always dispense 1 flake at a time. I used match mode and approximately 75% of the charges were right on with the rest being .02 grain overthrows. The .02 overthrow amounted to 1 or 2 flakes, which were easily removed from the pan with a small scoop. Very little wasted powder from bouncing out of the pan during dispensing compared with my old manual dispenser. I have not shot the new loads yet, but I believe they will be more consistent than using a balance beam scale for measurement.

I'm really impressed with the scale's accuracy and repeatability, I've read that RCBS uses strain gage technology which is not suppose to be as accurate a magnetic force restoration balance technology used in high end scales. Other electronic scales I've owned have a tendency to drift and if I check them with calibration weight over time they will vary. This scale is very stable and I have checked the accuracy at the beginning, during and end of a loading session and it is always the same within .02 grains. It is also sensitive to .02 grains and can detect a single kernel of Varget other similar extruded powder. The dispensing is not so good, it ok in standard mode which is only accurate to .1 grain. If set to match mode it has a tendency to drop too much powder even when set to slow. The small drop tube has a tendency to drop power in clumps instead of single kernels. Its tunable to account for power types which improves the dispensing accuracy but still not perfect. For my match loads, I keep tweezers handy and will pick out a few kernels as needed to get the desired weight to within one kernel of power. All that said, the MatchMaster is a game changer and makes powder dispensing and measuring a much faster, more accurate and enjoyable process.

I wish I would have purchased this year's ago. What a time saver and very accurate!!

I wanted to like the this dispenser but in the end I had to return it. As far as accuracy and consistency goes, it's very accurate and it cut my standard deviation in half with my reloads. Where this dispenser fails horribly is the design for removing powder. Having to put a tube in the bottom of it and hang it off a table to get your powder out doesn't seem smart. I found that the powder dispensing tube's won't empty properly either. You put it in trickle mode and not all your powder will come out so your forced to pick it up and shake it to get the powder out of the tube's which cant be good for the scale. And the worst part is you don't really get all the powder out at the bottom either, their little door gets powder stuck in it and as you open and close it you can see little pellets falling all over the place and hear a grinding of powder that's getting stuck in hidden places. I've been reloading for awhile now and I've never lost so much powder on the table and the floor. My whole area was a mess and to me this was unacceptable, especially for a 900 dollar price tag. Oh, and the Bluetooth app is about worthless and doesn't want to connect properly. I'll be buying an Autotrickler instead and I'll use my reliable Hornady Autocharger Pro in the meantime.

One of the best buy ever

This was initially suppose to be an upgrade from my old Chargemaster 1500 ( which gave up the ghost after 15 years). Faster dispensing. Combined trickler and potentially programmability. A total in excess of 1K dispensed rounds were tested over the period. Unfortunately, no consistent - repeatable results with this particular piece of equipment. The biggest issue(s) are: Consistency = repeatability These affect two significant components: the time and number of "dispenses" to achieve a particular number of reloads. The average of 20% overthrows meant that those loads could not be used. Debatable whether the 4% variance (.04 grains +/-) in "Match Mode" threshold would be met. I understand the vagaries of Varget (extruded) powder along with the environment. Ultimately I could not consistently reproduce any of the batch testing results. Nor could I improve on the "better" batches. Batches were based on reprogramming/fine tuning of various parameters within the powder configurations. I ended up returning the unit. However, I must stress my disappointment. I have been a long standing customer of RCBS (reloading components) - over twenty years. The Matchmaster was the largest single purchase and supposed to be the most technologically advanced. It turned out that it did not meet the minimum manufacturer specifications and utter frustration trying to program and obtain those aforementioned specifications. Specific to the BT app: If a custom powder configuration is programmed on the Matchmaster ( and not the app) it can not be modified in the app subsequently - only on the Matchmaster.

When I first got this, it functioned extremely well - was accurate on throws +/- 0.02 grains. Now it usually won’t calibrate properly and is out by up to 0.6 grains on static weight. It’s made for some real reloading frustrations. I’m waiting to hear back from RCBS but nothing so far. Update - RCBS has not been helpful at all. They have about 2 or 3 week turnaround per email response and when they respond it’s pretty pathetic. They don’t seem to take the time to read through my detailed explanation of what is going wrong. I managed to get it working better by fiddling with the transport screw. I though I had it figured out but then suddenly it’s back to failed calibrations and weights that don’t match a properly calibrated acculab scale. RCBS has asked for videos now so I’m sending that and will update again after another month or so. This is brutal. I’ve ordered an Auto Trickler fx120i and will junk this RCBS as soon as the new system arrives. A very expensive lesson.