Thlax said:
In what situation do people prefer the gold? Or is it just a personal preference as a "good in all" category but not the "best" in any specific category (night-tritium, day-FO)
There is no hard-and-fast rule. And so few people have shot a handgun with a gold beads these days, it’s become something of a forgotten system. Smith and Wesson still has – or had it available – as an optional upgrade on a few of their large-frame, competition-oriented revolvers. Back in the beginning and middle of the century S&W offered them on more models. It was not uncommon to find them on the front sights of men who carried a handgun for a living.
It’s really a matter of personal preference now. And you’ve got to find a ‘smith who has a source for the gold rods or the finished bead, and actually knows how to install one. Some use a finished part that has a head that's larger than the diameter of the rod. That style usually fills the front sight from edge to edge. I find that set-up makes the front sight vague and undefined. The style that Jim Garthwaite installs is smaller than the front sight blade, so it leaves the front sight well-defined while still having enough surface area to reflect light. I liked it the first time I saw what he was doing and shot one.
Several years ago a small group of well-experienced shooters spent a day on our indoor range testing out different sighting systems, in lighting conditions from dim to complete darkness. We each shot handguns with fiber optics, gold bead front sights, tritium systems, and plain black front-and-rear. We timed and scored shots objectively at a series of typical, defensive-shooting distances; and we also took note of our subjective impressions – as in, “I liked it and it felt fast; or I didn’t like it much and it felt _______”.
We found a couple of trends among us. In dim conditions none of the systems really stood out over the other. The fiber optics ceased offering any advantage. If there were
any light available in the room, the gold bead front sight would pick it up and reflect it long after the fiber optics ceased. Nothing worked well with no backlight, the target in darkness, and dim light beyond the target.
Results using the tritium system were interesting. In conditions that approximated an overcast night to total darkness, nearly all of us posted a slower time compared to the sight systems that didn’t generate an artificial glow. And our subjective impressions were that the glowing tritium actually became a distraction to making quick shots. The darker we made the lights, the harder it became to see beyond the glow of the sights and make out the target. And we felt the urge to pause and align up the sights at very close distances, where it was completely unnecessary to make the hit.
The only one who didn’t suffer the extended times and the other negative, subjective impressions was a shooter who had many thousands of rounds downrange training in the dark using tritium sights. When we performed some drills to test very precise shooting in darkness, we did find that while slower, the tritium system provided for a greater deal of precision.
I’ve been exposed to a lot of the different sighting systems making the rounds. I prefer a plain black rear sight, and a gold bead installed in the front sight in a diameter smaller than the width of the blade over them all. I’ve seen fiber optics sights break. I don’t put anywhere near the amount of time shooting in the dark to overcome those disadvantages I mentioned earlier using tritium systems. And they also need replaced every decade.
(as a head shot with the big dot was...well....interesting at 20yrd)