Krebs Custom 9×39 AK – The Bigger, Badder Subsonic Round

If you’ve never heard of Krebs customs, he’s been building absolutely the finest AKs available for longer than many of you have been alive. He was one of the first to incorporate features like AR stocks and AR like handguards on the AK, modernizing the platform and giving more adaptability to modern accessories. He’s pretty much like the Wilson Combat or Nighthawk custom of the AK world. When you bring the two together, it’s a thing of beauty; basically, many of the benefits you get from 300 Blackout apply, so that allows you to have an awesome AK built by Krebs Customs in a very compact package. Being subsonic, you can use a shorter barrel, and still get full powder burn. So, you don’t lose anything ballistically with the short barrel, giving you a fun-sized AK without any drawbacks.

Taking a closer look at the gun, you have what is the finest AK platform gun that I’ve ever had in my hands. I’ve been familiar with Krebs customs for a long time and always wanted to try out one of his AKs. Now that I’ve had the opportunity, they totally live up to the hype and even exceed it. This is the nicest AK I’ve ever had the opportunity to fondle and drool on. Everything is extremely tight, well fit, and has no slop. When looking to build his 9×39 incarnation of the AK, Krebs turned to Sharps brothers to get one of their custom milled receivers. This is their MB47 receiver that Marc Krebs worked on with them to optimize it for the 9X39 round. Aside from providing a rock-solid base for the gun, it has some other cool features including integrated buffer tube threads so you have a wide variety of options; whether you keep yours a pistol, or convert to an SBR. There are also some really good QD mounting points, an option you don’t see on many AKs.

On the receiver, you have one of the Krebs safeties, and if you’ve never seen this it’s pretty cool. It has a large shelf for your finger, allowing you to activate and deactivate the safety without losing a solid grip on the gun. Beyond that, it has a notch allowing you to hold the bolt back, and insert a mag, then drop the bolt; essentially giving you the function of a bolt release in the AK platform. Optics can be mounted from the optics rail on the side of the receiver. You can get mounts like the side mount from Midwest Industries that will allow you to use just about anything you can dream up. It also has the best trigger I’ve ever seen in an AK. It’s made by ALG and is tuned by Krebs; pulling at a crisp 2 pounds. It also has a really nice short reset, so again, I just can’t say enough good about this trigger. Every part of it has been polished and reworked by Krebs. The package is rounded out with a grip from Tango Down, which feels really good, and the Gear head works tail hook mod2, which is a great brace and is adjustable for length of pull.

How effective of a round is 9×39? Well, it’s interesting to talk about. First of all, you have to understand that there are some basic limitations because by nature it is a subsonic round. But just listening to steel get hammered at 200 yards, you know its gotta be good at least that far out. We did do some testing; so basically without upsetting the bleeding hearts out there, let’s just say that if a bullet has enough force to go through a 3/4 inch piece of plywood, it has enough force to be fatal. Its pretty well established that 300 Blackout subsonic is useable for hunting 100 yards and in, and of course, shot placement is definitely important. But one of the big selling points of 9×39 is its supposed to be able to reach farther than 300 Blackout, so we placed a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood at 300 yards to see if we could pierce it.