Coldfinger,
This is just my opinion; so take it for what it's worth.
I believe the Deluxe or the standard or the professional hunter dies from Redding are worth the extra money.
I owned many Hornady die sets, I own many Redding die sets, I think the Redding are superior. the only die sets for pistol or rifle that are better are the Dillon's. the Redding double carbide ring dies sets for pistol are absolutely stellar. I would use them in any of my calibers any day of the week.
I have many other dies sets and have sold them off slowly due to replacement with Redding or Dillon. I will not use bushing die sets ever again. my 338 Lapua Redding set is a bushing die set and I have replaced it with the FL non-bushing set. I have the bushing seating die with micrometer but that is it. that combo works excellent. I have the neck only sizer and the body die. the only Lyman die I have is a 22-250 carbide neck sizer. just for the 2,000 pieces of 22-250 nickeled brass I was given for my predator (coyote) gun.
I was recently gifted a Redding deluxe set of 7MM Rem Mag dies, I checked out the sizing of the neck without the expanding ball. (side note: when I pulled the expanding ball through the neck of the brass it was so stiff I was thinking the necks were getting over worked on my friend's hunting loads/brass) I was shocked to learn that the neck of the brass was sized to an inside diameter of 0.273". if you do not know what the significance of that is: I will explain. 270 cartridges need a neck sized to inside diameter of 0.275". this means that I will not have to spend $300.00+ on a special set of dies. all I need is the 0.275 expanding ball for a 270 caliber die set and I have my 270-264 Win Mag die set without the huge price tag. I also found this to be true with Hornady 7MM R/M sizing dies, RCBS and another set I have sold off to get rid of them from my inventory of die sets.
back to the Redding FL sizing dies, I find them much better and much more consistant over their bushing dies, actually every bushing die I have ever used has had some really funky things going on with it. I now do not trust bushing dies. I have traded, sold, or given away all my bushing dies.
