mc said "The Beretta has the a&d beat on every point except soul and a human touch"
on this you are dead wrong. I have been to the Beretta factory several times and have pics of stages of the 626 manufacture. The ribs were laid by hand, by one man. The barrels were hand fitted to the action, by a small group of specialised fitters, some of them ladies, working in a well lit, well ventilated space that puts the English workshops I visited to shame.
Each stage of machining is hand checked on sophisticated measuring tools. Parts hardness is tested on modern apparatus.
If you wanted more soul you could have it sent down the road (literallyl) and have a world class engraver hand touch the engraving. And on to Valeriano to have the stock tailored to your precise dimensions and tastes. And all this can happen in one day and cost a couple of hundred Euro.
I did not do any of the above. I "invested" in a British boxlock that has done plenty for the soul of my gunsmith but nil for mine. That lesson was not enough, I repeated it with an Italian bespoke Anson-Deeley SXS which is just as finicky, but at least the Italian maker sends me parts, usually free of charge.
Has any English maker ever offered a replacement V spring for one of his guns free of charge? I would love to know who and when.
