Rimfire has improved quite a bit than a decade ago in terms of options. It's almost like comparing centerfire, you can get a Zermatt Origin, or a Terminus Zeus. One is 850 for the action, one is 1450 for the action. You can get them to shoot the same. But there are other pieces of fit and finish and qualify of life that you can decide if it really is worth it or not.
I'd say getting a custom barrel and having a good rimfire smith do the chamber and work will get a Bergara, RimX, Vudoo, CZ 457, Tikka to basically shoot really closely to one another. The value $$ lies in other things...
Bergara... man I cannot stand the cycling of the action. It feels clunky. I hate the half cock on close. Does it make the bullet leave the barrel any differently? Not really.
RimX
- 90 degree, smoother action than the B14r by a lot. Easy to get prefits if you really need to swap barrels. I run a Vudoo, but I wish I could easily swap and buy say a CF barrel and have multiple different steel contours. I could do that with a Vudoo and get my Action to a smith, but it's just a little more work.
- I love their magazines. No issues with loading them.
- I hate the catastrophic failures that can happen... basically a round gets pushed into the chamber instead of being under the extractor claws. This leads to a round stuck in the barrel, or if you jam the bolt, you can break your extractor. Having this happen on the clock in a PRS stage, really, really sucks. Doesn't happen often at all, and is user-error, or environment error (a barricade hit your mag), but when it happens it sucks.
Vudoo 360 - Only 3-lug 700 SA foot print action. So if you want 3-lug and you want 700 foot print, well that's a reason there.
Vudoo 2-lug. Very smooth action. No catastrophic failures in terms of the round being stuck. Yes magazine loading is not 100% braindead simple like the RimX, but you can pay attention, and get it working. Barreled action as a unit with customer service support.
Ultimatum Deuce - The action cycles very smoothly, but has a partial cock on close, which is not as bad as the B14r, but it is noticeable if you're running the action slow. If you're running it fast, it's probably one of the funnest/smoothest actions to cycle. The magazines don't have a pull tab, which were a bit of a pain to load, but they don't get rimlock and are fully adjustable. I still prefer the RimX magazines. The control feed and no timing barrel is very nice, and also there's no catastrophic failure. I sold mine when I heard the company was going out of business. IBI purchased them recently, and I might get another action and send it to a renowned rimfire smith to spin up a barrel for it in the future.
CZ 457/Tikka - Inexpensive. Smaller form factor magazines, and need a special chassis inlet for them. Still push fed, so there's very minor BC variances as the bullet is touching the feed ramp / chamber as it goes in. And as wear and other things happen in the magazines, I've seen 'flyers' from these more often than a Vudoo and RimX.
I personally run Vudoos. I have considered the RimX, but I can pay attention when loading my magazines so I don't really worry about that. And also I don't want the chance of a catastrophic failure as it literally will drop me back many positions in a national / regional PRS competition.
If all you do is sit on a bench and shoot paper, literally anything can work. Just get a single round feeder and push rounds in one by one, don't have to worry about magazines and all of that.