Curved combs can look very appealing or very odd, depending on how the rest of the gun flows. Personally, I really like the "soft" comb you see on many southwest Virginia style guns - the comb line starts out almost straight at the butt and ever slow slightly eases into a radius as you near the nose, but still has a well defined nose to the comb. The curve is so gradual you don't end up with a high point or "hump" midway on the comb.
For me the combination of lots of drop + a lot of "pitch" or tip back angle to the heel of the buttplate can make it hard to get the sights into alignment.
Like Virginia guns, the various styles of North Carolina rifles have been misunderstood and a lot of misconceptions and overgeneralizations have been out there for a long time. A few very knowledgable people, Mr. Ivey and Mr. Briggs foremost, have gone a long, long way in the past couple of years to get some of the previously unpublished guns out for us to see and to give us a sense of understanding the basic styles and makers. There is still a lot of research to be done and understanding to be gained, but we now have some great starting points. I think more rifles out there perhaps will now be found and recognized as North Carolina pieces, that were previously not known, due to people being made aware throught their work.
Guy
