I promised that I would relate my experience with my Lion Country Supply Ugartechea as soon as the issues were resolved. It doesn't look like that is going to happen any time soon, so I am posting my experiences now and looking for advice.
I bought a grade II Ugartechea from LCS as a Christmas present for myself. I was very happy with it. Very light and quick handling. The wood was nothing special but decent, dark color and some figure - better wood than some other Ugartecheas I have seen.
However, when I shot it for the first time after Christmas I discovered that the safety was defective. It was resetting automatically between shots from recoil. I thought "no big deal," and immediately sent it back to LCS for warranty repair.
LCS had it for about 4 weeks (which seemed a little long to me -- shipping only takes a day since I am only 3 hours away).
When they sent the gun back to me the safety was incredibly stiff and rough. To give you an idea, in comparison it made the safety on my Remington Spartan feel like it was made by Purdey. I could not reliably move the safety with gloves on, and my wife could barely budge it. Needless to say, it was entirely unacceptable. It was also very rough feeling, not smooth like it was when I first got the gun.
In addition when the gun came back it had scratches on the butt of the stock. Oviously someone was careless handling my gun. On top of the poor safety repair, I was very steamed.
I wanted a new gun, but they did not have any on hand. I considered asking for my money back immediately but there are no other good options at that price point for a SXS, so I told LCS to take one more shot at fixing the safety on the condition that if I was not happy for any reason they would order me a new one or refund my money. So, back to LCS goes the gun.
Again it took about four weeks and I got a call from LCS saying they had my gun back from the gunsmith. I asked them to tell me how the safety was. The gentleman confessed that it really wasn't any different than before. He said it was pretty stiff. (I could actually hear the loud "clang" noise the safety was making over the phone.) I asked him to compare the safety with the other Uggies on the shelf and he said that the ones on the shelf were considerably smoother. I told him not to bother sending it back.
So, now I have to decide what to do. My options are:
(1) order a new Grade II from Spain in the configuration I want (full and mod chokes), which will take about 6 months and, since LCS will consider it a special order I will not be able to return if I don't like the wood or the wood to metal fit is not nice; or
(2) get my money back and find something different. Unfortunately there is not much new I can get in that price range and I am not real keen on buying used. I can spend half as much for a low end Turk, or twice as much for an AYA or maybe a Chapuis. In the middle I think my only other options are an HK Fabarm or a Weatherby D'Italia, but when I was shopping in December I compared both of these with the Ugartechea and was not impressed -- they both lacked the grace of the Uggie.
So, what do you all think?
BTW, I should note that while I was very dissatisfied with the "repair" work, the folks at LCS have been easy to deal with. Unfortunately, in this instance they are only as good as their smith.
