More Surefire blown bulb issues

[geepondy]

You may recall I posted about having the Surefire LA for my 8AX blow twice. Well after two calls and three weeks later, I finally received replacement LAs. The first ones were apparently never sent out. Now I find that the LA from a gift E2 for a family member has blown after only being on it's third set of batteries. I will call Surefire in which I'm fairly certain they'll send a replacement. Despite the delay's in sending replacement LAs for my 8AX, I don't really have an issue with Surefire's customer service.

My issue is, just how reliable are the LAs from the Surefire line of lights compared to other incandescents? I am not a heavy duty collector/user of flashlights like many members of this forums but with all my previous "subpar" incandescent lights, ranging from cheap 2d cells up to many variations of mags, I don't recall ever having a single premature blown LA on any of them. I would like to hear from people who have owned/used many Surefire and non Surefire lights and their experience with blown bulbs to see if Surefire lights have an above average rate of prematurely blown bulbs. At this point, I'm extremely hesitant to purchase any more Surefires as gifts.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I am sorry to hear that....

 

[lightlover]

In terms of impact resistance, I've read that the SF LA's of a few years ago were not as tough as they are now. Except for one complaint recently (here on CPF), the E-series LA's especially have proven to be very tough indeed.

[One MN03 that I have is now my spare for emergency back-up, because it has survived a total of 25 metres of drops !! (My reasoning is if it can survive all that, it's proven so reliable that I should keep it aside.)]

Certainly, I think that a SF LA will survive drops and shocks very well compared to "other brands" I've had.

But you're talking about early burn-outs ? I mean, the LA's actually failing before they've seen much use ? As you know, a batch of the LA's for the 8AX (the X80) were faulty. And of course, SF will replace them, even if sometimes a little slowly ...

Apart from known issues like that, I don't think that SF use a worse standard for their lamps than other manufacturers.

The SF reputation for reliability means that anything that goes wrong is "newsworthy".

It's true: if a SF lamp blows, or anything goes wrong, it's an event - people will post about it, amazed and outraged.
So you will hear about any bad examples just because it is so unexpected coming from a SF product.
I don't think that other makers come under the same kind of scrutiny.

Sounds like you should definitely contact SF Customer Service about the E2 LA you've had go wrong.

lightlover

Ps - geepondy, is it possible that your family member touched the LA, leaving a fingerprint - that's obviously deadly for any lamp, but if someone isn't aware of that, it's easy for non-lightfreaks to do without thinking of cleaning it afterwards.

 

[Mr Ted Bear]

When I last spoke to PK about blown bulbs, ne informed me that ALL bulbs are now checked by SureFire prior to shipment. Previously, SF used a random sampling method to verify/check each shipment, but because of the numerous complaints, they now check each and every bulb.

 

[Size15's]

It is very, very rare that a blown or damaged E Series lamp is reported.

I am glad to read that SureFire's QC is checking every lamp. It would be interesting to find out if this reduces the number of blown lamps in the field.

Al