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Don,

Gonna tell you that my spindex crimp starters are unaltered.......they work just fine with new or fired Cheddite hulls.

I wonder if there's different versions of the Spindex?

Not that I know of.

I replaced mine 2 years ago, but even the old spindex crimp starters worked fine with new Cheddites.

Well actually, LeftyDon, there are two different Spindex crimp starters. The first crimp starters with the Spindex name (free to spin and index to existing crimp folds) were metal, and came out with the 600 Jr. and the Super 600, probably in the mid '60's. (The Super 600 is a progressive which evolved from MEC's original progressive, the 500. The Super 600 quickly evolved into the 650.) MEC changed to the current plastic one-piece Spindex in '86. In my experience, the plastic Spindex indexes better, but the old metal 3-piece ones make a better crimp start. The older ones have a steeper "cone" angle, and can make a flatter start, closing the hull a bit more. I especially notice this on the smallest gauges -- the 28 and the .410 bore. If the crimp mouth is not closed enough, the crimp closing punch will sometimes catch a fold and bugger the crimp quite badly. Because the slope on the black plastic Spindexes is so shallow, you've got to get the crimp starter all the way down to the shoulder of the crimp on 28's, and even that sometimes doesn't work. Someday I might convert my 28 to a metal Spindex. I use an old metal Spindex on my .410's. The old 3-piece Spindexes take some adjustment to "spin" best, and that seems to go over a lot of user's heads. I'm sure that plus parts count and material cost were the reasons MEC went to the one-piece black plastic starter.

There are other options. I actually rather liked the spinning aluminum crimp starter that came with a 16 gauge Lyman EasyLoader we used around the house when I was a teenager 50 years ago. I gave that press away. That starter had little springy loops on the side that performed the index function at least as well as the ridges inside the current black plastic Spindex. Wish I had one now.

Then there is the fixed brass crimp starter from BPI. I have one and like it, but it has one fault. It is a lot like the old MEC steel fixed crimp starter, but it has a shallower angle. Those old MEC's were pretty flat, and could crush a flimsy hull, such as the modern thin, straight-wall, Reiffenhauser style hulls of today -- in 16, we have few other choices, so can't avoid those hulls. Anyway, my only beef with the BPI brass crimpers is bad location of the shell. The old MEC fixed crimpers were threaded on the outside, and came with a ring screwed onto those threads for whatever gauge you were loading (same part as the resize ring), and the crimp start was thus perfectly centered. I still use a bunch of those old fixed MEC's in all gauges.

Yeah, metal and plastic types. I have the black plastic spindex types. With Herter's and Winchester once fired Cheddite hulls with 6 petal crimps I was having problems. The hulls being dinged in around the crimp's rim plus the petals weren't all forming the same. Some of the 6 petals were not folding in correctly and moving on to the crimp station resulted in crappy crimps.

I reduced the 3 longer ridges back to match the 3 shorter ridges inside the spindex and problem was solved. This modification came from a society poster a couple of years ago that also had this problem. So I know I'm not the only one with this problem.

I didn't have a problem with my 12 gauge Sizemaster, it showed up when I bought my 16 gauge Sizemaster. I modified all 4 (six petal and 8's in 16 & 12) of my Sizemaster spindex pre-crimps just to be safe. If you aren't having a problem then no need to do anything, I guess. But I didn't want to see others chasing their tails trying to figure out why they have crappy crimps.