Gun Review

When I first saw the SV10 Perennia at the SHOT Show this past February, I thought that the folks at Beretta had lost their minds. It looked like a totally new gun in direct competition with the Silver Pigeon/680 series over/unders. Why on earth would the world’s oldest company abandon its tremendously successful 680 series? Over the years I’ve owned a half-dozen guns from the 680 series and shot many more. Generally well balanced and always reliable, they are never a bad choice and often an excellent one. Why mess with success?
When my test gun arrived, the first thing I did was pull it apart. In true master gunsmithing tradition, I Googled videos on Perennia features and disassembly on YouTube. Then I disassembled my own 1998 Beretta Essential. The Essential was the company’s bottom-of-the-line over/under 10 years ago, but it had the same mechanics as all of the other stout-hearted 680s. Lo and behold, the interior actions of the Perennia and Essential are basically identical. I immediately felt better. The Perennia isn’t about the basics. The 680 already has those. The Perennia is about extra features.

For the immediate future, the Perennia will come only in 12-gauge field models. Options will be limited to 26" or 28" barrels without the Kick-Off hydraulic recoil-reducing buttpad and only 28" barrels with it. Suggested retail for the standard gun is $3,250 ($3,650 with the Kick-Off). A sporting clays version is rumored for next year.
The first thing everyone notices about the Perennia is the bright nickel-coated receiver. It has a new action shoulder creating a raised outline (Beretta calls it an “arrow”) on each side, which is echoed by the deeply convex stock inletting at the head. It is all very modern but not over the top like the Browning Cynergy. The design house of Giugiaro has cosmetically influenced some of Beretta’s other guns, and perhaps it had some input here. The mechanical engraving’s 100-percent coverage breaks up some of the receiver shine. The engraving is marked “Perennia III,” so other iterations might be in the works.
Inside the action it’s old home week with some major additions. The 680 series was always a triggerplate boxlock, but now the triggerplate is detachable. Remove the stock, apply a half-turn to the little Torx bolt under the safety, give a yank and out it comes. Removing the trigger group will give you better access to cleaning things and the very occasional parts replacement. It’s one of those things that isn’t necessary but is nice to have and fun to show your friends. The Beretta 680 was never the simplest action, so easy access to all of the bits and pieces is probably a good idea.
By the way, the trigger blade itself may look like it’s stainless, but it is made from titanium. I’m sure there was a perfectly good reason for that. Most of the interior of the action is nickel-plated to prevent rust and make cleaning easy. The trigger is inertial. The first pulls on our gun varied from 4 to 41/2 pounds with above-average creep; the second pulls were a consistent 43/4 pounds and crisp, with no creep. Like it or not, the safety is automatic, but that is easy to remedy with a little Dremel nip & tuck. As in past Berettas, the safety incorporates the barrel selector via a lateral toggle.
Basic lockup and ejection remain unchanged from the reliable 680 standard, but there is an addition. At the very front of the monobloc, just above the ejectors on both sides, are slot heads. Turning them a quarter-turn with a screwdriver changes the ejectors to extractors. This will be convenient for those who never have learned to catch their ejecting hulls by hand. Those who have this skill can simply ignore the feature.
Another change in the monobloc is a slight reshaping of the side lumps, which engage recesses in the top of the receiver sides. This is mostly a cosmetic bit to give the monobloc a different look. A real difference is that the replaceable hinge stubs on the Perennia are considerably larger and stronger than those on the 680. There are also new internal reinforcement shoulders just to the front of the stubs to further strengthen the action. Because of these changes, 680 barrels will not fit the Perennia.
Advertising hype has it that overbored barrels improve patterns and reduce recoil. In this spirit the barrels of the new Perennia I tested measured an overbored .737" compared to the .723" of my older Beretta barrels. Beretta was one of the last major makers to go to the 12-gauge overbore, but these barrels are there now in several models. Overboring has a price, and that is weight. The 28" barrels on our Perennia weighed 3 pounds 2 ounces, whereas those on my 28" Essential are 2 pounds 13 ounces. True, some of that huge 5-oz difference is because the Essential has no side ribs. But some of it is due to the overboring. That’s because overboring may put bigger holes in the tubes, but engineers insist on maintaining barrel-wall thickness. You end up with larger, heavier tubes.
If some is good, more is better. The forcing cones on the SV10 are a whopping 3-1/2" long. The cones on my Essential are only 1-1/4". The jury is definitely still out on whether cones longer than about 1-1/2" improve patterns, even with large shot. On the negative side, the longer the cones, the more possibility of gas blow-by with fiber wads or some plastic wads in very cold temperatures. Some feel that long cones combined with overbored barrels reduce subjective, or felt, recoil, though the recoil formula numbers cannot show this.
As usual, the interiors of the Beretta barrels are chromed for ease of maintenance and cleaning. As a Superposed owner who has watched his bores rust, I love chrome bores. The Perennia barrel exteriors are a nice ripple-free subdued blue-black. This is most appropriate for a field gun.
The Perennia sports the new Optima Choke HP (High Performance) screw chokes. They are nickel-coated steel, not stainless, and are OK for hard nontoxic shot from Cylinder up to Modified. The chokes are of the taper/parallel design. The 2-3/4" length of these flush-fit chokes gives enough room for at least a 1/2" or more stabilizing parallel section. The drop from the bore to the choke’s rear skirt is only .006". This offers the shot charge a less bumpy bore/choke transition than the usual .010"-plus and shows good machining tolerances. The screw chokes cause a tiny .043" swelling at the muzzles, but you can’t see it, so fuggetaboutit. These are nice chokes. No one has proven to me that they actually perform better than the old Beretta 2" Mobilchokes, but the tech specs read better.
The bottom line is that the Perennia’s barrels are very much up to date with their overbores, extended cones and long screw chokes. They have hit all the buttons.
Our Perennia had the .235"-wide untapered lightweight field vent rib. It is the same one that’s on my Essential. There is a simple steel bead at the front and mercifully no center bead to clutter things. The skinny rib is very nice, but it is also very fragile; I’ve dented the one on my gun several times. Fortunately, Brownells (www.brownells.com) sells the perfect fix. It’s the Murray’s Vent Rib Tool ($40). It makes straightening rib dents a snap. Still, a solid top rib would be so much stronger and classier.
Normally I wouldn’t mention Beretta’s forend iron. All the ejector and cocking stuff is in the receiver. The forend of the 680 series just has a couple of forend-iron levers and no real mechanism. Until now. According to the Perennia Website (www .sv10perennia.com): “The new fore-end iron boasts a new patented internal mechanism that maintains a constant barrel-receiver-iron fit.” It goes on to say that this improves “the strength of the locking system and the service life of the gun.”
The new forend contains a Belleville washer spring (a stack of slightly conical washers) that keeps just enough pressure on the iron to maintain a snug fit on the main joint between the forend and the receiver. Frankly, the snugness of the forend hasn’t been a major problem with the 680 series, but I’m all for improvements. In theory this addition will make new guns easy to open without letting old guns get sloppy. Our test gun certainly opened and closed smoothly.
But there is no free lunch. The new forend “iron” isn’t; it is aluminum. Why change from steel to aluminum on a part that sees a good bit of wear? Your guess is as good as mine, but here’s my try: Overboring the barrels while maintaining wall thickness increased weight. To counteract the increased weight, the forend iron was made from aluminum. To make up for aluminum’s greater wear tendency, a spring was added to maintain constant tension. Everything certainly worked fine on our gun, so all’s well that ends well. On the outside, the steel forend latch is now longer for better leverage and the new metal escutcheon around the lever is now aluminum.
The shape of the field forend is absolutely perfect. Petite and purposeful and spared the dreaded Schnabel schnout, it is right up there with the field forend paradigm of the ’67 Browning Superlights. Well done, Beretta.
The field stock on our Perennia seems to have been made on the same relaxed pistol-grip pattern as that of my Essential. It feels just right. Measurements are about the same and so are the pistol-grip dimensions and profile. The Perennia Website lists two available stock dimensions—the low one is 1.5" x 2.36" x 14.7", and the higher one is 1.38" x 2.17" x 14.7"—but a Beretta rep told me that probably only the lower stock would be imported. Our test gun was stocked higher than either, so perhaps it was a European spec. Beretta offers pre-fit recoil pads and buttplates of varying thicknesses to easily alter length.
Our gun’s stock had Beretta’s new Kick-Off recoil-reduction device, a $400 option. It has been offered previously on the Xtrema and Urika synthetic-stocked autos, but I haven’t seen it applied to a wood-stocked field gun before. The device fits into the butt of the stock and looks like a thick recoil pad. It consists of two metal, oil-filled hydraulic cylinders about 5/16" in diameter and a couple of inches long to absorb recoil and three coil springs to return the device to battery. This is all capped by a standard Beretta recoil pad. The Kick-Off can compress about 3/8" on recoil. Beretta claims a reduction of 69 percent of recoil. The body of the device is made from some sort of black techno-polymer plastic. It works on the same principle as the CounterCoil, R.A.D., Isis and some others. Most of the other reducers are made of metal and are a good bit heavier, so their market is the target gun.
The Kick-Off has a nicely designed black polymer sleeve covering the awkward gap where the device compresses. In all it is easily the best-looking example of the type that I have seen. It comes with a price, though. The device adds about 5 oz to the butt compared to a standard pad on a wood stock.
With the Kick-Off in place, the standard drawbolt attachment of the stock was out of the question, as too much disassembly would have been required to reach the stock bolt. Thus, Beretta came up with the patented Q-Stock. This involves a small metal trap door in the grip cap that allows Torx-driver access to unscrew an angled bolt that engages a stub drawbolt in the rear of the receiver. It is a little Rube Goldberg but seems to work and draws in the stock snugly. It certainly is quick and easy.
The wood on our gun was nicely figured, clearly a step up. Unfortunately, the dark oil used to finish the wood hid most of the figure. The oil finish also failed to completely seal the grain. This is surprisingly common in oil-finished European guns. The checkering is mechanically done but nicely so. The pattern is traditional. Wood-to-metal fit was fairly good on this early gun, but it was too proud at the top tang and where the stock heads up.
Our test gun did not ship with the extras that you’ll get when you buy your own. According to the Website, Perennias come with a plastic takedown case, five chokes (Cylinder, Improved Cylinder, Modified, Improved Modified and Full), a choke wrench, sling swivels in case you really must, an extra-thin plastic buttplate and some oil. There also is a Torx wrench for the stock and trigger, but you’ll need to get two more to disassemble the forend and Kick-Off. The guarantee is for one year, but Beretta will add two more years to that if you send in the registration.
I shot the gun at clays and loaned it around. General opinion was quite favorable. Most people liked the looks of the new receiver and didn’t worry about the flashy reflection as much as I did. It was an easy gun to shoot well. Balance was just at the rear of the hinge pin. This made the gun feel livelier than its weight would indicate. Without the Kick-Off, it would have balanced more to the front.
Some people liked the Kick-Off stock and some didn’t. It really depended on shooting style. The Kick-Off reduces recoil by collapsing slightly on firing. This spaces out the recoil similar to the way it is done with an autoloader. In exchange for this time delay, the stock moves an extra half-inch along the face during recoil. So if face slap is an issue, it might be worse with the Kick-Off. If it isn’t, the recoil reduction will be more apparent. Personally, I’ve found that familiarization with the gun let me adjust my hold to avoid face slap and better appreciate the recoil reduction.
The only real downside I found was the gun’s weight. At 7 pounds 9 ounces, it is at the upper end of what I want to lug around all day. But you may feel differently. For ducks, doves or driven, the weight won’t matter.
In the end you have to compare the SV10 Perennia to the existing line of 680/Silver Pigeons. The price point puts it about equal to the current dressed-up Silver Pigeon IV but well above the $1,925 entry-level White Onyx. The Perennia offers a slew of new features, and you are the best judge as to whether they are important. Beretta clearly put a lot of effort into this gun. The company always has made a point of offering choices, and here is another good one. We can never have too many of those.

Author’s Note: For more information on Beretta guns, contact Beretta USA Corp., 800-237-3882; www.berettausa.com or www.sv10perennia.com.