*sigh*
Okay, spherical bushings are a bit easier to fit well than a traditional bushing, which is the primary reason you'd use one. They can also be made a bit tighter before you have to use a wrench on them, which is important when you're a manufacturer dealing with a bunch of slow-witted customers (not to say S&W customers are any more slow-witted than the simps that plague other companies). People complain the gun is hard to take apart, and then either send a perfectly good gun back on your dime, or they take some sandpaper and ruin the fit and complain your pistol throws shots or doesn't work or whatever.
You can achieve good accuracy with either type of bushing, but most bullseye pistolsmiths are, I believe, using lots of time and a traditional bushing. Bushings aren't easy--they affect the barrel at every point in operation.
Now here's the rub: your bushing doesn't affect accuracy that much. Lots of people think it's a magical device, but it's not going to make up for poor barrel or slide fitting. The precision pistolsmiths take so much care in fitting bushings because for them, a difference of .5" at 50 yards is the difference between a 1.5" gun that can be shipped out to the customer, and a 2" gun that won't hold the X and has to be refit and tinkered with.
Is S&W taking a shortcut with the spherical bushing? Not really. They're doing the best they can inside of labor and budget constraints. Frankly, it's a lot better than the shortcuts other manufacturers take with their 1911s. And all of them, from Springfield to Para to the much-vaunted Kimber (especially Kimber) take shortcuts. The alternative is a pistol that takes a week to build, which nobody will buy at the price you'd have to charge.
Are they ripping you off? No, they're just being smart. People ascribe magical properties to spherical bushings, so why not tell them about how you used a spherical bushing? Would you rather them say, "We did a slap-dash job fitting a regular bushing"? If rubes want to believe that spherical bushings are magic, let them.
Why use one on the Performance Center and not on the regular E? Well, for the regular E, they're probably just trying a bunch of bushings from a bin, until they get one that fits good enough. Here, they're using what's essentially an E-Z Fit bushing, but they're taking the time to fit it.
I'd also point out that $200 is practically nothing in the realm of custom 1911 work. A trigger job with replacement parts will cost that much. So if $200 buys a better-matched slide, barrel, and frame, or saves you a trigger job, then it's money well spent.
