doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why are SXS's more expensive than O/U's?

Currently the A. Galazan over/under starts at $50,000 plus engraving, while his side-by-side starts at $40,000.

That O/Us are better than anything for shooting clays, is beyound questioning. That partly accounts for larger sales volume and sales appeal of them. But is an SbS inferior for hunting? I doubt that.

The current stock of new guns at Audley house shows 11 O/U's vs 5 SxS's in 12 bores. 20 & 28 bores are even showing 6 & 1 of each.

About a 3/2 ratio total. H & H shows the same in London.

This whole thread is based on a mistaken premise. SxSs are not more expensive than O/Us. Both appear in just about every price range. The Turkish guns and offerings from Boito etc cover the bottom. Spanish guns like the base grade Ugartechea and some of the utility grade Italian guns are a notch up where the new Ruger comes in followed by the RBL and so on up through Arrieta, Aya on the price ladder. Top end of the price ladder seems to be the O/Us from Purdey,Fabbri and Filli Rizzini and a handful of other British and Italian makers. Just have to purchase within your selected price point.

I do not believe that is true. As I said in my previous post, I think a competitive shooter could shoot virtually any discipline with virtually any gun (so long as fit and fnction were comparable) and win if he were incentivised. I think most simply have more experience/confidence shooting an O/U. I am hardly a county class shooter, much less world class, but my clays scores 40+/80+ are about the same whether I am shooting a Birmingham boxlock or a Beretta (or a Super Black Eagle for that matter).

Only the invited put their guns thru high volumn shooting. The other 99.9%,(uninvited) could give a hang and can't wait to sell 'em off to America.

The premise is quite valid in the lower price range. One can purchase an O/U shotgun of good quality for $1,500 brand new from Browning or Beretta. These are solid, proven designs that shoot where pointed and will last the user at least one lifetime. There is no comparable SxS. The Ruger which is now unobtainable was at least 25% more. The also unavailable RBL had a base price higher still. A 471 is close to 3 grand now.

There is no comparable price SxS that approaches the quality or durability of a basic Citori or 680 series Beretta for the money.

That's exactly why I originally posted my question, you hit it on the head. I look at the Citori and Beretta O/U's and say to myself, I should be able to get a SXS of similar quality for near that neighborhood, but you simply can't.

Although you called this the lower price range, and correctly so, there are a lot of other shotgunners on this forum site that think anyone considering spending $1,000 on a new smoothbore is crazy. All I can say is that if I measure the first new shotgun I ever bought while in my teens (Winchester M59 @ $120), in terms of tankfulls of gasoline I could have purchased at the time, most new decent guns today seem to be outright bargains to me.

Once again, Jones, that price differential is mostly due to volume of production. How many gazillion 680 series guns does Beretta make, compared to 471's? And Browning no longer makes any sxs--other than a few pretty high dollar sidelocks which are "finished" for them, in Belgium, by Lebeau-Courally.

One rather obvious answer to why you don't see sxs at serious competitive shoots is that almost no sxs are made as purpose-built competition guns. Lots of OU's are. Also, when you're shooting competition, you're likely to shoot what you're most familiar with. Very few shooters these days "grow up" shooting sxs. They may start with a pump or an auto, but because there are lots of moderately-priced OU's around (with single triggers, no less--so you've got a similar "sight picture" plus a similar trigger configuration to the pump or auto you started with), it's fairly easy to make the transition to an OU. And you can start with an OU field gun, like a Citori or a Beretta, and switch to a competition version of the very same gun. You start with a sxs field gun, and you pretty much finish with a sxs field gun--because that's pretty much all there is available.

I don't know that there's any advantage to a sxs over an OU as a field gun, although some would say there is--but I don't think there's any disadvantage either. And because it's easier to find sxs with the superior double trigger configuration, that's certainly one advantage over OU's in the field--right, Jack?

Ah, yes, Larry - although if anything, DTs are even less popular in the field than SxS. It is instructive that DTs on O/Us are even harder to find than STs on SxSs.

Fortunately, some of the more progressive gunmakers did build SxSs with STs for folks like me who, while accepting the burden of romantic claptrap, also insist on cold weather utility.