My new compact also has the plastic recoil spring guide. Also have found it to be a very sweet shooting handgun. I've put about 120 of FMJ through it, no problems feeding so far of course we'll see what happens when I start shooting HP ammo. The only trouble I had was loading the mags at first, stiff little springs in those things, slipped and cut the hell out of myself on one of the lips. But I left them loaded for a couple of days and that helped that situation.