The Arc6 has been discontinued.

Looks like the ones that work right are now collector's items.

Whatever happened to Peter (like I'm on a first name basis w/ him)... Is he still consulting with Arc, or has he moved on to other things? I knew there were issues with the Arc6, but haven't kept up with the story.

- Jas.

I'd figured this was the case but it's interesting to see that it's been made official. As I recall, the light was introduced at $300 or $350, sales were poor, and Peter made excuses for the slow sales and low distribution/discussion level based on the high price. Then it was put on "sale" for $250, supposedly for a month or two, at which point I remember saying to someone that it's a trick to clear some inventory and the price will never go back up to where they already know it won't sell if they're able to afford to let them go for this lower price. That was their first real admission of desperation I think. Months went by, the sale price stayed up, then dropped to $200, and I think it's been out of stock for about a year now? The Arc6 is a flashlight tragedy. I was so excited about it, as were many others, but things started to go disastrously wrong in the final stages. Glad it's been officially laid to rest and sorry it was never able to meet its potential.

SaturnNyne said:

The Arc6 is a flashlight tragedy. I was so excited about it, as were many others, but things started to go disastrously wrong in the final stages. Glad it's been officially laid to rest and sorry it was never able to meet its potential.

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Amen. Sad to see it go, but even more sad that it never met the awesome potential it had.

Wow, sad to say the least. Glad I kept mine - works great, perfect beam and the finish is perfect. Hope Peter turns up in a positive way again in the flashlight world.

sledhead said:

Hope Peter turns up in a positive way again in the flashlight world.

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+1

Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, I hope he is also designing the next must have light. Hope to see you again Peter. :candle:

I too kinda lost track of what happened to Peter. He just kinda disappeared from CPF. I still have the very first arc aaa which is 11 or 12 years old. I remember when the first arc was just being designed and talked about.

I actually really enjoy the Arc6. I have two and got rid of most of my McGizmos because I liked the Arc6 more.

The Arc 6 is still a great light, it is sad it is discontinued. I have never had any problems out of mine.

SaturnNyne said:

Then it was put on "sale" for $250, supposedly for a month or two, at which point I remember saying to someone that it's a trick to clear some inventory and the price will never go back up to where they already know it won't sell if they're able to afford to let them go for this lower price. That was their first real admission of desperation I think. Months went by, the sale price stayed up, then dropped to $200

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My understanding is that this is not the first of this pattern, but the last. New models were created and released while the current models were still on the shelves. This forced a clearance and cycle after cycle, Arc customers eventually learned to wait for the next sale. Each cycle had slower and slower sales, with smaller and smaller margins.

I have read posts here about problems with this light so, I never ordered one. I don't think it will be missed by many people. The Arc AAA is a different story as it is Bombproof!

SaturnNyne said:

The Arc6 is a flashlight tragedy. I was so excited about it, as were many others, but things started to go disastrously wrong in the final stages. Glad it's been officially laid to rest and sorry it was never able to meet its potential.

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This is my same thought.

I discovered late this brand, but it soon became one of my favourite and I bought 4 Arc AAA. The Arc6 sadly had been a big disappointment for me.

Given it's very rough start, it would have been best to kill the ARC 6 LONG AGO, and introduce an ARC 7 even if it was not much different but had the issues corrected so that the failure rate was greatly reduced. With the bad reputation it got tagged with there was no point it trying to save it. This might be a marketing failure, that followed an engineering failure.

Sad indeed. My ARC6 was my first semi custom light (sold it) and it was flawless in all respects.
I would buy another if it was supported with decent customer service.

Nice looking light... wouldn't mind having a failed one to use as a host...

I don't know if anyone else remembers this but the first offerings of the ARC6 were on ebay. I believe the intent was to drive up the desire but releasing a few on ebay first. The results of that were a lot of people got really turned off by their attempts to jack up the prices by selective releases. Had they instead just released them to the public instead of going the highest bidder route, they could have sold a lot more as people really wanted this light.

Dadof6 said:

I don't know if anyone else remembers this but the first offerings of the ARC6 were on ebay. I believe the intent was to drive up the desire but releasing a few on ebay first. The results of that were a lot of people got really turned off by their attempts to jack up the prices by selective releases. Had they instead just released them to the public instead of going the highest bidder route, they could have sold a lot more as people really wanted this light.

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Ya I don't remember ebay specifically, but yes the first lights were some auction and if I remember correctly those very ones had issues. That was another marketing disaster. I see them related to another popular light company... good engineering.... very bad business managers; in this case though they had engineering issues that it appears they were never totally able to put behind them at a reasonable price-point.

the ebay fiasco burned alot of people up, me included....I eventually bought one but the exposed circuit board, inductor wine, and obvious machining flaws really turned me off.....this combined with the fact that peter kept alluding that he was on the outs as far as the company goes lead to the demise of a light that could have been great

I've got 2 Ti PD-S lights and skipped the imitator.

carrot said:

Amen. Sad to see it go, but even more sad that it never met the awesome potential it had.

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+1

Arc's designs will be missed