Yeah Marlin was just really getting back to making high quality rifles before the Rem buyout. They had problems from 1964 to around 1990 or so then they started making good rifles again. Then along comes Freedom Group to screw things up again! I have all together 7 Marlin rifles with 5 of them pre 64 and the other 2 are from 94 and 96 I believe.

I bought my PH and all but one or 2 barrels (can't remember what year I bought the .338fed barrel) just before the S&W takeover and after I did some tuning (Bellum) every singe one of those barrels are tack driving machines. They weren't perfect since I had to do that with all the barrels but getting perfect headspacing and such in a barrel swapping type frame is near impossible. You can get "close enough for guvment work" and they were quite acceptable for the average shooter but a picky SOB like me has to tinker I was really lucky though when all of my barrels had perfectly centered throats and were correct diameter.