South Africa's Neostead: The Original Twin-Tube of the Shotgun World

Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases

Twin-tube shotguns such as the Kel-Tec KSG, the Smith & Wesson M&P-12, and the massive Standard Manufacturing DP-12, or Turkish creations such as the UTAS UTS-15 and the Hunt Group MH-12, are all the rage today. That’s undeniable. Just as undeniable are their common roots in the abortive NS-2000 “Neostead” shotgun from South Africa.

1980s and 1990s South Africa, at the pinnacle of their fight with an internal insurgency and under UN arms embargo, was the focal point for a vibrant season of firearms development meant to make the country as self-sufficient as possible. Security forces needed firearms to quell civil disturbances and armed movements tied with the insurgency, and the civilian population, particularly the white civilian population, needed guns to protect themselves and their properties from guerrilla attacks.

In 1990, a trio of local designers, engineer Tony Neophytou, CAD engineer Willie Pelser, and designer and producer Heyns Stead, started to work on a radically new pump-action shotgun design, which would have to offer maneuverability in confined space, high capacity, and ammunition flexibility for all civilian defense and military or law enforcement needs. The process they started would drag itself on for over a decade, and its results would be underwhelming when it came to market success but would definitely leave a mark in the global comings and goings of the firearm industry.

A Long Struggle

Starting from a wooden mock-up presented by Tony Neophytou to Heyns Stead in March 1990, the newly formed “Neostead Corporation” began the construction of five prototypes from July 1990 to July 1994. From the bulky, futuristic Neostead 2000 (or NS 2000 for short, from the names of Neophytou and Stead) to the XDM, EDM, ADM and ODM, the design conceptualized and solidified the two main features that would become the staple of the design: a set of twin top-mounted, flip-up opening magazine tubes; and a forward-moving barrel, which implied a bottom ejection pattern, making the gun fully ambidextrous, and a reverse pump-action operation for chambering a fresh round, more akin to the opening of an M-203 or other under barrel grenade launchers than to a classic pump-action shotgun.

To be fair, neither of the two technical solutions were unique or completely new in concept, but they were indeed very rare and most unusual. Before the Neostead shotgun would come to market in its final form, another shotgun based on a reverse pump-action system would be launched, this being the RMb-93 manufactured by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau of Tula (Russia), once again met by a less than stellar market reception.

Between 1993 and 1995, the ADM and ODM prototypes of the Neostead were demonstrated in the US at the ADPA Small Arms Convention, at the Trexpo East Show, and of course at SHOT Show, not mentioning separate demonstrations to members of the US Marine Corps and of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team in August 1994. Nevertheless, in 1995, the partnership with Tony Neophytou came to an end leaving Heyns Stead and Willie Pelser alone in their effort to finalize the design and bring it to production. Between December 1993 and late 1998, Heyns Stead and the Neostead Corporation were approached by, or otherwise entered talks with, companies such as Beretta, Colt, CZ Strakonice (now known as Luvo Prague), Ithaca Gun Company, Ramo Defense Systems, Sigarms, and Smith & Wesson.

As all attempts to license the Neostead design for manufacture in the US or in Europe fell through, Willie Pelser supervised the work of third-party suppliers to manufacture the parts necessary to the Neostead Corporation to assemble twenty PPM (Pre-Production Manufacturing) samples; essentially identical to what would be the final production model, all twenty PPM samples would be completed between March and June of the year 2000 and publicly demonstrated in South Africa in the same month. Following said demonstration, Heyns Stead finally reached an agreement with Joe Gebert—founder and, back in the day, CEO of Truvelo Manufacturers (Pty.) Ltd. of Midrand, Gauteng, known commercially as Truvelo Armoury—to manufacture and distribute what was ultimately dubbed simply the Neostead Shotgun. Around this time, the Jane’s Defense Infantry Weapons Associate Editor, Charles “Charlie” Q. Cutshaw, contacted his friend and current Firearms News Editor-in-Chief, Vincent DeNiro, regarding the Neostead shotgun. Cutshaw was a friend of the Neostead owners and DeNiro was the president of CTS, Inc. at the time, a large Title II importer and well-known NFA manufacturer and distributor. DeNiro spoke to the owner of Neostead and was interested in a manufacturing partnership for the USA, but he said that the ownership of CTS decided to pass since the company was very busy with defense projects with Singapore Technologies at the time.

Most Unusual

According to Heyns, Stead’s own write-up about the Neostead shotgun published in 2017 in the book “Firearms developed and manufactured in Southern Africa—1949–2000,” edited by Chas Lotter for the Pretoria Arms and Ammunition Association, the Neostead shotgun is “constructed using glass-filled polymer injection moldings, machined components, machined metal castings and pressed metal components.” Most of that technology was already available to Truvelo Armoury, although some parts had to be outsourced; this may be the reason why, according to the same publication, the Neostead was manufactured in limited runs of one hundred samples at the time, equivalent to each lot of barrels, breechblocks, and receivers, while lots of small parts amounted to 1,000 pieces each.

The bull-pup, boltless design of the Neostead made it indeed the all-rounder Neophytou and Stead had in mind when they designed it: from urban operations to room sweeping and from crowd control to intense firefights in the jungle, the 22.5-inch fully-ambidextrous configuration, downwards ejection through a slot located behind the grip and underneath the stock assembly, and double six-shells magazine tube with manual selection capability would get all bases covered. “Wait, did you say boltless?” Yes, let me explain.

Normally, in a pump-action shotgun, when you operate the handguard, you send the breech bolt back and forth; this also extracts the spent case from the chamber and ejects it (if there is one) and leaves room for the elevator to bring a round up to be chambered once the breech bolt goes forward. That’s not what happens in the Neostead.

In the Neostead, when you push the handguard forward, you’re basically moving the entire barrel assembly forward with it. So, pushing the handguard forward moves the barrel away from the breech, allowing a shell to be chambered and the empty case (if there is one in the chamber) to be dropped out. A bushing on the front of the receiver, and two machined lugs at the rear end of the barrel, guide its travel when the shotgun is chambered. The barrel reciprocates inside the receiver tube while the breechblock is fixed in place to the rear of the receiver and doesn’t move: the cartridge is brought back to it. When the trigger is pulled, it actuates a pressed metal sear link to release the sear, causing the shotgun to fire.

So, while the Neostead does have a breechblock, it lacks the sliding bolt assembly typical of standard pump-action shotguns—a technical solution called a “boltless design” by the engineers. Such action is reportedly very stiff and requires a high amount of force for cycling; the Neostead isn’t a “ladies’ gun” by all means.

At the front end of the handguard, just behind the hand stop, is a pump lock lever that must be pushed in to unlock the action and chamber the first round; it will automatically self-engage again once the action is closed, to prevent accidental opening. The pump lock release is recoil-operated, meaning that recoil energy will unlock it automatically after a round is fired.

The twin tube assembly, located over the barrel, is unlocked by a flat lever located just behind the carry handle; when such latch is pushed forward, the twin tube assembly flips up under the pressure of a leaf spring. At the end of the magazine dispensing unit (the “mouth” of the twin tubes) is a lever-controlled gate that needs to be pushed aside before each tube is loaded independently, and then brought back to central position before the twin tube assembly is closed. After which, it can be pushed to any position: if the lever is kept to the center, the Neostead will feed alternatively from both magazines until both are depleted; if set to the left or the right, the shotgun will feed solely from the selected tube. This feature prevents double feeding and allows the Neostead to be loaded with different types of ammunition—eg. less-than-lethal in one tube, lethal in the other—for additional operational flexibility. This feature is now familiar to many shooters, who have grown to question its real utility in the face of possible confusion in the heat of the moment, but back in the early 2000s it was absolutely novel.

The carry handle integrates an adjustable ghost ring rear and fixed leaf front sight. The Truvelo Neostead shotgun comes with a manual safety located within the trigger guard; a trigger and pump lock, a trigger disconnector operated by the pump handle and a firing pin retractor to prevent slamfire act as additional safety measures. The Neostead also features an anti-rotation hammer design and a sear link block to prevent out-of-battery discharges or accidental discharges in case the gun is dropped.

Not Meant To Be?

The inherently ambidextrous design, bottom ejection and straight-line stock would have normally made the Neostead a no-brainer for anybody looking for a high capacity, tactical combat or defensive shotgun. It was short (27 inches-long overall), lightweight (just 8.6 pounds when empty), and each tube held up to six 12-gauge, three-inch shotshells. A short Picatinny rail interface could even be attached on top of the receiver to install accessories such as tactical gun lights.

Unfortunately, the unusual design and the stiff reverse pump-action operation turned out to be deal breakers for many potential military and law enforcement customers; and the tightening of gun laws in the Republic of South Africa after the end of the long insurgency phase greatly reduced potential local sales. What was left to the Neostead were exports; the biggest single buyer was a distributor in Italy, which imported a grand total of fifty-two samples. The pictures illustrating this article were taken in Italy and date back to 2003, when that lot was imported and before the shotguns were sold, at a retail price which then amounted to €1,560.00 — just over US$1,500 adjusted for inflation.

The fifty-two Neostead shotguns today survive in private collections in Italy, as well as in the stocks of movie armorers in the country. While the vast majority of movie gun buffs regard the British sci-fi horror blockbuster Doomsday to have been the first to feature the Neostead, back in 2008, in reality the honor goes to the (somewhat lackluster) Italian movie Milano-Palermo, il ritorno, directed in 2007 by exploitation meister Claudio Fragasso, featured the Neostead in the hands of a Mafia hitman during a fierce firefight scene at the Montecatini thermal hot springs.

Other “significant” buyers included Angola (50 samples) and Germany (21 samples), while ten samples were exported to Japan, of all places, and smaller numbers to other countries in Europe and the Middle East.

Five Neostead shotguns were shipped to the United States, where they were tested in February 2002 and passed the US DOD MIL-STD-810F environmental tests; all samples were subsequently seized for forfeiture by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) which ruled the Neostead to be a “destructive device” as per the provisions of the 1934 NFA and 1968 GCA. It also violated the 1989 imported assault weapons ban ordered by President George H.W. Bush, as well as the domestic assault weapons ban of 1994 within the infamous Brady Bill (expired in 2004). As a result of the potentially most lucrative market being shut down, and local and international sales failing to take over, Heyns Stead and Truvelo sadly had to take the decision to shut down the manufacturing lines. The Neostead shotgun went out of production in December 2010 with the relevant patents expiring around the same time.

Not the End

As we previously mentioned, the Neostead design left a deep mark in the way pump-action shotguns are conceived, and manufactured, in the modern world; particularly those aimed towards the military, law enforcement, and otherwise “tactical” markets.

In 2011, a little less than one year after the Neostead was pulled from production at Truvelo Armoury and its patents expired, Kel-Tec introduced the KSG pump-action bull-pup shotgun, featuring George Kellgren’s take on the selectable twin-tube system, this time located underneath the barrel and actuated by a standard, not reversed, pump action.

Declaredly, the KSG had been developed with the goal to “improve” over the Neostead design. Truth be told, in the 1970s, George Kellgren had worked on several prototype pistols, sub-machine guns, and assault rifles at the NIDR, the National Institute of Defense Research of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of the Republic of South Africa; and later, while owning and operating Grendel, Inc. in Florida, he had toyed with the idea of a bull-pup pump-action .410-gauge shotgun in the form of the GSG-41, which never materialized despite being scheduled for a tentative market release of Summer 1993.

The author was unable to find any conclusive evidence as of whether or not George Kellgren had had the chance to interact with Tony Neophytou and become aware of his twin magazine tube concept. What is known, as admitted by Heyns Stead himself in the book Firearms Developed and Manufactured in Southern Africa—1949–2000, is that in February 2009, before the exclusive patents expired, Truvelo Armoury licensed the twin tube design to UTAS Defense of Antalya, Turkey, which would have it slightly tinkered with by American engineer Ted Hatfield resulting in the launch of what is currently known as the UTS-15 shotgun.

It is interesting to note that, in 2006, Ted Hatfield himself had been contracted Smith & Wesson to develop what was to be the “ultimate police shotgun” and reportedly, his concept was very similar to the Neostead and to what we know today as its developments. Smith & Wesson had interacted twice with Heyns Stead twice about the Neostead. In 1995, Stead tried unsuccessfully to interest Smith & Wesson in purchasing a license to manufacture the shotgun in the United States; then again in 2002, Smith & Wesson attempted to have it manufactured in South Africa under the Smith & Wesson brand for international exports. This failed because the Neostead Corporation and Truvelo didn’t have the necessary manufacturing capabilities to produce the Neostead shotgun to the scale Smith & Wesson requested. In 2021, Smith & Wesson entered the fray with their own take on the design: the M&P-12.

A star by its own merit, despite being gone for good for over a decade now, the Neostead is by no means dead: its drawbacks fixed, the brainchild of Tony Neophytou lives on, and despite what some think of it, it’s destined to stay with us for a long time. 

—

This article is dedicated to the memory of Roberto Allara. Roberto was an influential gun writer in Italy ever since the 1980s and was a great support in the first years of my career as a gun writer over 20 years ago. He is also the one who did the photography for this article. – Pierangelo Tendas

TRUVELO ARMOURY NEOSTEAD SHOTGUN SPECS

• Type: Pump-action shotgun
• Caliber: 12-gauge
• Capacity: 12 rounds in twin magazine tubes
• Barrel: 22.5 in.
• Overall Length: 27 in.
• Weight: 8.6 lbs.
• Finish: Matte black
• Grips: Vertical, integral to the injection molded stock assembly
• Sights: Fixed front, adjustable Ghost Ring rear
• Barrel Length: 6.14 in.
• Trigger: Approx. 5 lbs.

---