Are you a dedicated clays shooter who doesn’t happen to have over ten grand laying around for a new P-gun? You’re in luck! Perazzi feels your pain and wants to make things (well, a little) easier on you. Enter the MXS, Perazzi’s “affordable” option. You can get yours with fixed or interchangeable chokes, a standard or adjustable stock and blued or nickel finish receiver.
It probably won’t surprise you that they didn’t lug a bunch of their high-line shotties out the Media Day to let just any schlub stroll up and manhandle them. Which means I didn’t get a chance to pull the trigger on one. But despite the wary, sidelong glances of the Perazzi booth staff, I hefted one and played with it as long as I dared before they had a chance to call security. And it mounts and points about as nicely as you’d expect.
Will the Perazzi prestige factor justify laying down over $2,000 more than you would for, say, a Beretta 692 Sporting, though? You’ll have to make that call.
Those are absolutely gorgeous, but you know what the $2000 cheaper Beretta has going for it? It doesn’t have the company and model name slathered down the side of the receiver. That’s just horrible.
Yes. A nice scene of pheasant flushing or a bird dog pointing would be much nicer.
As much as I like the high end perazzi’s, I’ll keep my beretta.
How does your Beretta compare to a Citori? I’ve shot 2 Brownings but not a Beretta.
I think it’s a personal thing. I have not carried or shot a citori. I’ve shot perazzi’s, ruger red labels, and the cheap imports.
I chose the silver pigeon for the way it ‘felt’ and pointed. And for the weight.
I got tired of humping my Benelli auto up and down the snake river hills.
Perazzi prefers to deliver engraved guns, and offers a variety of engraving options.
I enjoy the coverage of interesting hunting and clays guns very much.
Yes. That’s absolutely low-rent styling right there.
It’s advertising. Many people who purchase base models enjoy it, I suppose, like the crown symbol on a Rolex. Perazzi makes beautiful guns sans logos for those who want a beautiful, not merely slim and well-balanced, gun. Their competition record is quite good. I own Gambas, not Perazzis. Let us take a minute to recall the glory of one 28 gauge Perazzi, a quail gun, Dick Cheney’s.
My trap gun is a Beretta 682X Super Trap (high rib, wide receiver). It was manufactured in 1990, so it is 4 years older than I am. However, I picked it up for $900 (MSRP about $3000), and went on to compete with it at the local, state, and national levels. Never once has it given me so much as a hiccup, and I absolutely love it.
Guns are one of the last consumer goods that are still built to last for generations. Thank you Perazzi, for I will pick up one of your used guns that someone is dumping to buy a new one. Hey, the used one will already be broken in for me too!
I have absolutely no clue how the kind of prices one sees on the high end double guns is anything approaching justifiable.
The reason you usually see is twice the barrel to manufacture. But honestly a quality manufactured double barrel has a lot of hands on time from workers which ups the price more than just an assembly line with poor QC at the end.
First, watch one get made. Trouble is, thanks to the American gun industry’s penchant for selling only cheap crap made out of plastic and tacti-kewl “mil-spec” finishes, there are scant opportunities for Americans to see how nice guns are made any more.
Second, understand that in any double gun, there are really two guns. There are not only two barrels, there are two sets of lockworks.
Making a single trigger that controls two locks isn’t as easy as most non-gunsmiths think. The early single trigger systems are reviled by gunsmiths for their finicky and touchy adjustments. Robust single triggers took awhile in history to develop.
Then there are two more sets of lockwork contained in the forearm for the ejectors. And you have to trigger those locks with the fall of the hammer in the rear lockwork, which means you need some elegant way to transmit the hammer fall into the forearm.
Then you have to time the locks. On English, American and Italian guns, when you open a double gun, both locks should cock at the same time – ie, you should hear only one “click” out of the action. Likewise, on English, American and Italian guns, the ejector hammers should be timed so that they cock at the same point and, if both barrels have been fired, trip at the same time.
Now the barrels have to hang on the hinge pin in such a way that when you lock the barrels up, there is absolutely no “wiggle” or “slop” you can feel in the barrels on the action with the forearm off the gun. This will require adjusting the bite and the hook, usually. Modern machining has made this easier to get right the first time, on older guns, this was a hand-fit, smoked-in process.
Then there’s the details of the ribs (both sight rib and the side ribs), wood inlay/fit, etc.
The wood on higher end shotguns isn’t cheap. The blank can cost anywhere from $500 on up.
Nice guns cost money. Nice rifles (with real blueing and real walnut wood, with real checkering and a nice, tight inletting job) cost in the same ballpark ($5K and up) as these double guns. People who are fixated on military-surplus or military-spec weapons have largely lost all sense of what craftsmanship costs to accomplish.
Oh I don’t doubt for an instant that they can easily cost that much to produce. But they are WAY past the point of diminishing returns.
Browning 725 is a great, less expensive alternative. Although Perazzi has a huge following in the competitive clays shooting world (for good reason). Berettas are good guns, and I have owned a few…. but their customer service is a non responsive to say the least.
I shoot American trap and Olympic trap, and my Perazzi MX2000/8 is the best handing gun I have shot to date… as I tried many (Perazzi, Krieghoff, Ceasar Guerini, Beretta, Browning, even Fabarm) – nothing swings and balances like Perazzi, at least for me. That said, this thing is just hideous, reminds me of older K-80s with large lettering on the receiver, and probably just as ugly as that out-of-place blue line on the new Beretta DT-11. I would get used MX8 instead.
I purchased an MX8 special new in 1992…. The only thing I’ve had to change on it is the stock; as I got older and fatter the original didnt fit me anymore. I have fired countless rounds through this in 21 years and nothing has ever broke. Yes I have changed leaf springs and firing pins as preventative maintenance, but Perazzi’s engineering makes that a 2 minute ordeal.
So yes the kind of prices one sees on the high end double guns is completley justifiable…..
Good shotguns are worth every penny. The balance and trigger can make hitting targets almost effortless. Hope to try one of these out.
I purchased 2 MXS’s they came with fixed choke 1/2 & 3/4 so I had Briley open them to 1/4 & 1/2, Had the forcing cones lengthened and I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to shoot them, they absolutely destroy targets, and the pattern must be seen, great. As for the big ugly MXS logo, on my Nickel model I used Engravers Black to highlight the small Perazzi print on the side of the receiver as well a the big MXS on the bottom of the receiver, on the Blue action I used Jewlers Gold paste in exactly the same way, they both now look awesome, and I have a nice pair of Perazzi’s one is my sons and the other is mine.
Comments are closed.