SIG Sauer P226 X-Six Skeleton Black

Look at the front of this slide and you'll understand the name. SIG's Mastershop cut a row of skeletonized ports through the dust cover and slide nose, lightening the muzzle end and exposing the guide rod and recoil spring underneath. It's an aggressive look, and it does real work, pulling weight off the very front of the gun where it matters most for a competition pistol that needs to settle fast between shots.

This is the X-Six, the long-slide member of SIG's X-Series target line, built in Eckernförde, Germany, and finished in the dark gunmetal tone they call Skeleton Black. The full 6-inch barrel stretches the sight radius well past a service P226, and the adjustable target rear sight pairs with a fiber-style front to give you a clean, repeatable picture. The single-action trigger breaks crisp, exactly what you want for precision work on paper.

The grips are where this one separates itself. Black-and-grey laminate wood, checkered across the panels with a smooth diagonal flat, sculpted into a target shape with a pronounced beavertail and an extended frame. They carry the same dark, weathered tone as the slide, and the whole pistol reads as one deliberate palette. The slide wears the X-Six logo on the flat, with SIG Sauer at the muzzle and the Made in Germany roll mark along the frame.

The frame is steel, not alloy, which gives the X-Six its planted, muzzle-heavy balance. You feed it from a flush 9mm magazine that seats into the extended grip. The controls retain deep black against the gunmetal slide, and the bottom of the dust cover carries a short accessory rail.

It comes complete with the original factory box, manual, and the test target SIG fired before it left the shop. For a shooter who wants a German-built target pistol with a face nobody else in the line has, this is the one to reach for.