I shoot ~16 BPCR registered matches per year and use a C. Sharps. It is an excellent rifle with nice wood and excellent fit and finish. Of the matches I attend, which average around 30 shooters (some as large as 50, a couple as small as in the teens), # of rifles is split about equally between C. Sharps, Shiloh Sharps, CPA and the balance a mix of Win-Miroku/Browning, Pedersoli and others. The service I and everyone I've spoken to about our C. Sharps has been excellent. My spotter has several C. Sharps and all have engraving and fancy wood and they are beautiful rifles. As nice as any custom rifle by any of their competitors. I plan to purchase an 1874 from C. Sharps as soon as I can get my new gun budget replenished. As far as Pedersoli, there have been a couple of fairly long threads in the past couple of years on their lack of service in the USA. Best of luck with yours. I'll stick with C. Sharps, Shiloh, CPA or other USA made rifles. The shooter who just won 3 of 4 of our Nat'l championships at Raton this year (.22LR scope and both scope and iron-sights BPCR - just missed .22LR iron when a small screw fell out of his rear sight during sight-in for the rams and he had to hold-off and only got 4) shoots C. Sharps by choice, as they offer no contingency rewards for doing so.

There was a fellow at our range who shot only 100 shots in his new Pedersoli. The hammer also dimpled and would no longer set the primer off. Every manufacturer has quality problems and may have accidentally not hardened the hammer. But I hear stories of others who have had the same quality issues. So if you want a rifle that only needs to be fired 100 times then the purchase of the cheaper quality version may be all you need.

I prefer the Shiloh Sharps since I know it should easily have a 100,000 shot life span; unless poor handling on my part breaks the firing pin.

I would be wary of C Sharps, not everyone has had the same great experience as noted. A friend and smith went to Quigley this year and not to mention the C rifle he spent two hours on he said three others had to make a run to C to get them up and running. I also had an extremely bad experience with them several years back and based on it I would not recommend doing business with them.

As for the barrels, do you know they are Broach Cut Match Grade?
Pedersoli barrels are machined from a chrome moly alloy having the metalurgical composition called 30Cr Mo4  Uni 7845 which is a patented alloy variation developed by Mauser in the 1930s specially for their new M34 light machinegun which has such a rapid rate of fire. The alloy was designed to prevent or minimize the barrel from "walking" the bullets on the target as the barrel heated up. Only Mauser, Sako, Mannlicher and Walther use this expensive alloy which Pedersoli buys.

At Pedersoli all barrels are drilled and reamed but then add a third step which is to HONE the bore hole to bring it up to the match grade tolerance of the final bore diameter.  Also the honing produces a much finer finish in the bore hole and this fine finish becomes the tops of your lands.....mirror finish affect before we start the broaches on their job of cutting all the grooves.
 
Also, they use two of these 5-6 foot long broaches on each rifle barrel.
The first broach brings the rifling up to within .0020" of the final dimension.  The second broach having 15 cutters brings the rifling up the last .0020" to the final dimension.
This second broach has the last three cutters of the exact same size.   As cutter #13 makes the final tiny cut it is worn a bit.  Eventually cutter #13 will no longer bring the groove up to the final diameter so cutter #14 which has been doing no work, comes into play and handles that final cut.
#14 eventually wears a bit and cutter #15 which has done no work up to this time, comes into play and takes over making the final cut
Barrels are visually inspected using a borescope which projects the picture onto a large TV monitor.  Air gaging is performed to verify the rifling is within match grade tolerances (plus/minus .0002").
Per Dick Trenk - former Pedersoli Match Director

I get by the C. Sharps management attitude because their rifles is my experience have been better than the others. Had two shilohs one had to have the barrel cut back becuase of a trumpet shape in the bore and the other was completely rebuilt. Shiloh would not fix the trumpet barrel and even wanted to charge me for a new one...

That said, when ped gets any sort of customer service established it will be time to relook their wares, til then, caveat emptor. Only one I would recommend ped to is an enemy...

In my mind they don't even look like Sharps.

SS

I saw a special on Pedersoli within the past 6 months.  Everything from the wood, which is aged for a minimum of 7 years to the fitting, finishing, casting recievers, engraving, etc. is done "in house".  It was a fascinating story.  This is true of every item they sell.

It all comes down to how much jingles in your pockets.I have a shiloh #1 , c.sharps 74 , umberti highwall,and a browning 1885 bpcr.I tend to shoot the 1885bpcr the most.If I could keep only one it would be the 1885bpcr.The shiloh and c sharps are the best looking,the umberti is nice,But the browning feels the best for me?  I tend to date a rifle not marry it.That said, my friend has a ped.74 and it shoots!It has 400+ through it with no problems, just some trigger work ,Thanks Bob.

Don't worrr - here o nthe other side of the pond we have the same issues with US manufacturers - and others too.  Distance and customs kill service - and up the price quite a lot...