It comes down to the the type of hunting/shooting you do and personal prefference. When I started getting a bit more serious about shooting SxS's I bought several American guns, mostly Fox and Ithaca guns, both 12 bore and small bores guns. I found they pretty much all had too much drop for me and the 12 bores were way too heavy for my type of hunting. I found that British 12 bore guns seem to be about perfect for me. I toyed around with early hammerless sidelock designs and quickly learned that while these guns were quite interesting, they usually had design flaws that made maintaining them a real project. I soon moved to mored standarized designs, mainly boxlocks which proved to be much more reliable and the later guns could even often could be had with stock domensions that worked for me. I shot a Lincoln Jefferies BLNE for years without a hick up, I should never have sold that one. After years of looking I found the Best Gun for ME, a first year H&H Royal self opener that had been stocked as if it was built for me. My Holland has 29" tubes and comes in at 6lbs 9ozs which is about perfect for me. It was not an inexspensive gun but it was a good buy and it will be the very last gun I part with. Shoot what you like, for me nothing beats wild prairie birds taken over my dogs with my Holland.

My first crew of Springers and I, a good day in SD with the Holland.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]