Oddly enough I was looking there. What my take was The marlin 60 is a 50/50. Tack driver out of the box, plagued with horrible triggers.
Ruger 10/22 = great out of the box, not as accurate, plethora of parts.
Not much was said about the remington 597 though.
The 597 should be more accurate out of the box than the Ruger, too. Plus, it's a full-size gun with better stock sights than the Ruger.
When the 597 first came out, they had sucky magazines, but Remington's fixed that. The aftermarket started kicking in for the 597 a few years ago, with the most common upgrades being the hammer (which improves the trigger pull) and extractor. Both are easy swaps.
If you're swapping the 10/22's barrel with a bull, then stock sights don't matter since they're attached to the barrel, and you'll have to add a scope.
But on the other hand, if the rifle is already accurate, there's no point in a bull barrel except for the cool factor and added weight to kill recoil.
IMHO, the 10/22 is expensive for what you get, doubly so if you're going to throw away half the rifle to buy even more expensive replacement parts. But then, the gun bug is impossible to resist (unless you're Mike T
) and you gotta do what you gotta do.
On the other hand, the Model 60 comes with a built-in high-cap mag, which you can't get for the other two in CA.
Works WAY better. You need to make some investments to make 10/22 as accurate as Marlins come out of the box.
