My great *new* nightstand light

Couple times a year I get back to my incand roots. Pull my e-series, m-series, fm-series lights out of the box and enjoy them where and when appropriate. But this time I realized that every single incand light I had was just too bright for late night home duties. The dimmest one I have is based on 50 lm bulb from Lumen Factory. So I started to discuss with Tad the possibility of having a custom ~15lm bulb for his e-series adapter. Tad was very kind to begin investigating the possibility.

But then I had an insight. I took my 2xAA minimag (exactly 1 inch bezel), installed the whiter xenon replacement bulb and put on an F04 diffuser. Boy, what a fantastic combination. I can get anything from almost mule like wall of gentle warm light to a medium diffused beam, typical for F04 on e-series. And this works for hours on a pair of eneloops. A nice touch is that it is a totally silent night time twisty.

Highly recommended!

Very cool idea!!!


I have an assortment stemming from1aa numbers from the 1950's, to a Mag Solitaire, to newer blinders if need be.
Not completely shown to the right is an Elzetta Alpha with a Powertac instrastrobe tailcap that doubles as a David vs Goliath object if need be and a SureFire G2x Pro for 2am house light.... 6=3

I had no idea that size diffuser fit the Minimag. I'll have to investigate this. I do really like the Surefire MN01 on two Alkalines as a night time light. That works great with a diffuser as well.

It's even a great reading light.

Another nice finding. Low mode without regulator.

Despite maglite mini AA produces just 14lm, I sometimes feel that even this is too bright. The beam thru F04 when the head is turned just a bit to turn the light on is all flood but still a relatively bright one. But if I turn the head all the way so it almost goes off, the output drops dramatically, I'd say down to less than 5 lm. And it is still all flood.

So I have a great two mode incand light!

Same should be true about any light with adjustable beam