I use guns that belong to others with side saddles .
Brass Down off course.
I have never personally owned a gun with a side saddle, or anything else. Mine have been bone stock....with some additional tweaking of gun fit, bbl lenghts, recoil pads and such.
For ME , I prefer my shotgun to be "all rounder" - I use them for everything. I want reliable and the ability to do expedient maintaince with minimum tools.
I have been in serious money tourneys, various hunting situations, shotgun shooting COF's. I have had on more than one occaison factory donated ammo cause a problem,... with a golf tee , a stick, my keys...I drop TG and get the bad pellets out. I have been out in the middle of nowhere, and fallen in mud , fallen in lakes, resevoirs...or encountered tornados or other storms - ... I can fielld maintain MY Shotgun better. Same reason why I prefer the 1911 Gov't Model....designed a certain way to work ( reliable) and to be maintained in the field.
One never knows the where or when of next encounter CRSam.
On one COF it was bad weather, muddy and we actually had to wade creeks and shoot while in the mud [ reminds me of what Dave Williams spoke of on another thread] ...things got real ugly real quick. For folks and guns... yep that was me with TG dropped sloshing my gun in the resevoir to remove mud / muck and slime... there was can of some kind of tractor oil ....it worked .
FWIW I ran this course twice. MY SX1 did not fail - it kept running. For Safety's sake when the creek bank attacked me
. Fear of mud in bbl - The SO stopped me- I dunked gun in resevoir , used a OTIS pull cleared bbl and kept running. It had kept running with the slime and muck that managed to get on, in and around it. When I was "attacked" by the creek bank , the mud "clumped down like a mud slide - safety matter for my sake.
The other gun I used was a 870 with a plain bbl ....made in the year of my birth . Even tho I fell in [ $#%& bar ditches] the gun never stopped running.
If I had a tool kit and allen riches that day, and various "parts" - I could have named my price and gone home with a wad of cash.
I'm going for the last man using a stock gun on earth award.