I'm glad they're out there since they build a lot of guns that would otherwise only be available as either antiques or very expensive custom builds, but I think that if you order one you should be willing to either accept a gun with poor fit and finish or look on it as a project that will take some work to put into proper order.
I have a MVTC Bess and it's reasonably nice now, but I had to rework the trigger, refinish the wood, tweak the barrel until it shot straight, retemper the ramrod, dull the brightly polished metal and go beyond the recommended procedure to make the bayonet fit properly. Now none of this stuff cost me anything but time, but if I were to order another in the future, I'd take all this into account.
One thing I still need to do is replace the sling that came with it. It's made of paper thin leather that easily stretches and just looks cheap and tacky.
There are two major flaws remaining on the musket that I don't intend on correcting. The wood on the fore end of the stock is still too bulky. In order to correct that I'd need to change the position of too many pins and that would require me to fill in the holes. I guess I'll just live with a little too much wood. IMO, too much wood beats too much wood putty. Second, they put the forward sling bracket in the wrong location. It should be located centered on the first brass ramrod guide so that when you return the ramrod to position it doesn't get caught on the sling bracket. They put it about 6" too far towards the rear of the gun. If I repair it now, I'll have more holes in the stock to fill in.
I think they did it that way because the slings they had were too short. The India pattern muskets used a shorter barrel and a shorter sling.
