Tuned up and ready for competition, the Shadow 2 Orange takes an already stellar pistol and cranks it to eleven!

Descended from a long line of great DA/SA hammer-fired pistols, the Shadow 2 was bred to excel at practical shooting competitions – specifically the Production Division of USPSA and IPSC. Like a thoroughbred racehorse, it’s most at home when put through its paces at speed. 

Purpose-built to combine quickness and accuracy, the list of improvements over its predecessors is driven by the goal of creating the perfect pistol for sport shooting. Its longer slide wears crisp sights with a commensurate long sight radius, making it easier for the shooter to achieve accurate hits. The full-length dust cover on its frame brings added weight, deadening recoil and helping keep the pistol flat as it cycles. A strategically-shaped slide tapers from thin at the top to wide at the bottom, slicing weight away above the bore’s centerline, helping to kill muzzle flip. Building upon the classic CZ 75 grip angle and shape – known for its ergonomic feel and natural aim – the Shadow 2 takes it a step further, refining that grip shape and adding a deeper beavertail and increased undercut to the trigger guard. Add to that more aggressive texturing on the front and backstrap, and the pistol positively cements itself in hand.

But how do you take an already race-bred pistol and make it better? Enter the Shadow 2 Orange. 

With brightly-colored grips, magazine bases, and magazine release paddles, CZ’s factory wanted to signal that this particular model of the Shadow 2 was unique. 

The most important part of the Orange’s equation comes from mechanical accuracy – engineers decided to take what was already an incredibly accurate gun in the Shadow 2 and cut its group sizes nearly in half. This is accomplished by replacing the standard barrel bushing with a hand-fit external bushing similar to what is used in a CZ 97 or a 1911. Accuracy with a standard barrel bushing is no slouch, but it is designed with enough clearance that the barrel can be tilted and removed from the bottom of the slide. 

By fitting an external barrel bushing that can be easily removed out the front, tolerances between that bushing and the barrel can be tightened up tremendously, resulting in reduced group sizes on paper. Those tolerances are so tight the barrel is impossible to remove without first disassembling the barrel bushing from the slide.

Besides the increased mechanical accuracy, the Orange gets custom shop-worthy hand-fitting at the factory. Slide rails begin oversized and are painstakingly fit to an individual frame until the pistol cycles with glass-like smoothness and an impressively tight slide-to-frame fit. 

Also improved is the trigger, as the factory equips the Shadow 2 Orange with a short-reset disconnector and a competition hammer. This brings the shooter a smoother trigger pull with a significantly reduced forward travel required before the trigger resets for the next shot. It’s all about speed, and the Shadow 2 Orange is built for it.

The choice to purchase the Orange model over the standard Shadow 2 is personal, but if you want a factory pistol with custom-grade up-fitting and no room for compromise, it must be Orange!