Re: What\'s beyond the PR-T ?
I'm a big fan of the PR. They are really easy to work with and the beam is outstanding. Unless I'm mistaken, the line of McLux PR heads came out after it was discovered that the PR worked so well with LED's.
Now the natural question presents itself. What's beyond...? Well, it would depend on what you want. I think the PR based lights are perfect for most things that you would use a flashlight for. If you want a light for up close work, you could just take the reflector out of your McLux and voila. You have a very nice flood light. So at the other end of the spectrum, there's the "throw" issue.
I think that it is well settled that you need more reflector for more throw. If more throw is what you want, without getting too big, there is an option. Carley makes a very nice 1.37" reflector that is pretty easy to work with, although not as easy as the PR.
I modded a KL2 with one of these reflectors awhile back and the results were impressive. The output was very similar to that of a
M@g mod. Of course, the KL2 was much bigger than a McLux PR, but the host for the Carley reflector doesn't need to be that big.
I have more Carley reflectors coming in and I'm going to build a few heads around them. At this point it's just a project for me, but I do question the practicality of a small light with a beam tight enough to out throw a PR based light.
I had played with the idea of just machining threads into the reflector itself and threading the front end of it for a bezel ring, but the aluminum used to make the reflectors isn't very heavy. What I mean by this is that I can tell by the way the reflectors machine, that the aluminum is pretty soft, so I decided against using this method.
When time permits, I'm going to build an entire light around the Carley 1.37" reflector and I will post the results for those interested. Although I don't think that the Carleys are better than the PR's, they do perform differently and that does open a new avenue for experimentation.
