Ex-versamax owner here. I will never be going back to remington firearms, ever.
Bought the gun on a Friday and immediately took it home to take it apart and tinker around. First thing I noticed was that no matter what I did the forearm was impossible to tighten. Tried to do everything including tighten it so much the skin ripped off my hands! After a few hours I convinced myself it wasn't a huge deal and that it doesn't affect the performance of the gun, but the thought was always in the back of my mind. I also noticed the trigger had a centimeter or so of pull before firing, I also convinced myself this was normal for shotguns, which for some it is. Last but not least the gun had some strange side play where the rod that drives the bolt meets the hammer. The metal on the inside was worn in some strange places that indicated unhealthy rubbing, the bolt was also pretty difficult to push back at about half way.
It was now Sunday and time to get the important work done, shooting the damn thing! Right away I noticed how nice it pointed and soft shooting it was with everything from trap loads to 3.5 inch magnums. Definitely a gun you could shoot all day and not get sore (but that comes from the weight, not a great gun to walk around with all day). The next thing I noticed was that after about a box of trap loads my middle bead was no where to be seen. Just an empty hole in the vent, how nice. Dumbfounded, I thought to myself "Oh well, I don't really like the mid bead anyways" but again, the thought was there. Now that I had gotten used to shooting the gun it was time to smash some clays. This was probably one of the most frustrating things I've ever encountered in my 10+ years of shooting and hunting (I'm only 21 now). Not only was I missing clays, but a LOT of clays. We were only hand throwing but that is irrelevant because I've always been great at any type of thrown clay. I probably missed 50 clays before I just started shooting randomly at different positions around the clays. I noticed that when I waited for the clays to fall beneath where I could see over my gun that I was smashing them. Interesting, so the next thing I did was to pattern to gun. I'm sure you know what's going to happen next. I was about 6" low at 30 yards every single time. Now I had had enough.
I'm not even going to begin talking about my experience with Remington customer service and their Canadian distributor..
I called my local Wholesale and spoke to the guy that sold me the gun, he told me he had been expected a call. I brought the gun into the store and he told me I should have given him a chance to talk me out of it, which of course I didn't as I had read a LOT of positive things about the VM, but that's not worth getting into. He pulled another salesman over and said "How many of these have you seen come back in" to which he replied; "Can't even keep track". This all happened on the Monday after shooting and thankfully they took the gun back no questions asked and gave me a full refund, I think the steam stopped pouring out of my ears.
He told me to come back Wednesday and he'll have me hold every gun in the store if I want. I am a believer that generally you get what you pay for so I started with the Berettas and Benellis. Long story short I am the happy owner of an M2 field which is so nice to carry/shoot/show off I can't get into that here either.
As per the Maxus, I held one but it felt too chunky and off kilter for me, I also didn't want to mess around with adjusting the shims, it does have some really great features though.
The gas system in the VM is really genius, and has a lot of potential, it's just too bad the rest of the gun was falling apart around it and Remington basically told me to shove it.
Buy a "B" gun and don't look back.
. But also wanted a gun that will be reliable with light loads.
