Great discussion. Seems a common theme is there is often a tradeoff, not just between "feeling better" and "shooting better" which wasn't too surprising, but also looking specifically at retention, sight tracking, recoil management, accuracy, etc. Very interesting, I appreciate all the comments...sorry I've been absent from the thread since the initial post, it gave me a lot to think about and I needed some range time to work through things, but that's been in short supply as of late.

I was finally able to get a solid chunk of time last night to burn through half a case and get it all sorted out. Went more smoothly than I expected, I think I was much better able to perceive the impact of small changes this time around compared to several years ago with a P30 (back when I was just starting to take shooting more seriously). Reaching the trigger and controls wasn't a problem for me with any of the configurations. Working presentations with dry fire I'd tentatively settled on Medium side panels and backstrap (the default configuration), but that went out the window real quick, strangely I preferred both the Small and Large backstraps over Medium. Settled on Large which let me lock my wrist better and gave my support hand more room to get on the grip, leading to improved tracking and reduced muzzle rise in multiple shot strings. I limited my testing then to matching left and right panels (although I know some people like to mix them up). Came down to either Small or Large. At first I thought the Large panels felt a bit better, but after switching back and forth multiple times a clear pattern emerged that my index off the draw was better with the Small, I think I was getting a more consistent grip out of the holster. I should do more SHO/WHO shooting next time, but I'm pretty confident that Large backstrap and Small side panels is the way to go for me.

One other interesting takeaway for me is that I really like the trigger geometry of the VP9. The amount of travel and where in the pull the trigger breaks feels really, really good to me. We always talk about how pulling the trigger straight back is a good thing, and trigger control isn't something I've struggled with in many years, but the VP9 is one of the first guns where I really feel that's exactly what's going on, pulling straight back. I'm thinking the position of the trigger also impacts how the reset feels...maybe it's not just the distance of the reset that matters, but perhaps also how compressed your finger is when the shot breaks. My P-series HKs have gone to Grayguns for reduced reset work not in the hope of squeezing out faster splits with a shorter reset, but because the longer reset on those guns didn't feel natural to me, I gave it time but it just never felt right...doesn't mean I couldn't have shot them decently, but I like it when everything comes together naturally and you don't feel like you're fighting yourself on anything. I need to get a few thousand more rounds downrange with it, but between the ergonomics and the why-didn't-I-do-this-years-ago combination of Dawson and 10-8 sights, I'm feeling pretty good about this gun.