Below is what information I know of regarding rare and/or desirable Malkoff dropins.
Please post pics of your rare Malkoff dropins (or at least what info you know about them).
The ones I can think of: (including links w/ historical info)
#1: MC-E DD
Malkoff MC-E Direct Drive Drop In
There were at least five of these made - the ones that I know of were custom one-offs comissioned by
Lampenfisch,
bigchelis (qty. 3, one was a 'warm'), and
jslappa. From reading about it, it sounds like they
were overdriven on an 18650 and suffered from less output than expected. AFAIK these were
the last DD dropins ever sold by Gene M.
Edit: Over the subsequent years since originally posted, I have read of at least two of these dying under normal use - certainly experimental prototypes rather than the typical quality of Malkoff design & production. :sigh:
#2: M91N
I'm happy to say that
I own one;
etc comissioned a '5000K' M91N from Gene M,
sold it to oldways,
who sold it to booya,
who sold it to me. It is my all-time favorite Malkoff dropin, in my favorite tint.
Glock 22 has another one (but in 4000K); he was lucky enough to have Gene M make one for him.
He first tried the M91, then the M91W, then settled on his current 'N' - good taste IMO. :thumbsup:
I recently tried to order two more from Gene M but he politely declined due to current production workload.
There may be a couple of others out there, if anybody else has one please post.
Edit: And it looks like there is at least
one more 4000K M91N 'out in the wild'.
#3 P7 DD
Malkoff P7 Projects
Malkoff P7 Direct Drive Drop-In (Photos)
P7 Goodness - Malkoff P7 head
There were a few of these made (my guess is less than a dozen - bigchelis once posted that he had four at one point), and they initially sold for the bargain price of $59 IIRC. They generally get ~$125 on CPF/MP when one comes up for sale every year or so. I don't know much about these but they are apparently pretty good - it sounds like the SSC P7's were a much better match for direct-drive than the Cree MC-E's.
#4: M60 prototype
My New Malkoff Projects
From April 1, 2007:
The P-60 style dropin will be an LED version to replace incandescent module. I don't know about cost. It depends on the parts and work involved in putting them together. Right now I'm developing the drivers for these applications.
Building the Malkoff P60 Dropin Index
Malkoff Drop-in Comparison: Then and Now
Unfortunately the pics in the above thread aren't linked anymore. :-/
According to this thread, the earliest one(s?) may have been made with a SSC P4 instead a Cree XR-E? This is unconfirmed.
At any rate, an aluminum reflector was used instead of the brass module w/ optic like we're used to seeing.
IIRC I've seen only one of these sell on CPF Marketplace, but there is no reason there aren't a few more out there. As these came out before I was active on CPF I don't have a feel for how many of these were made but it might be very very few.
#5: M60W MC-E
AFAIK these are the least-common of the M60-series that saw full production. The M60 MC-E's were uncommon to begin with (partially due to their expense, as their list price was ~$125). Furthermore, since this was before the wide popularity of 'W's, my guess is that there may have been less of these made than the standard version? They were made using the M60 'Flood' optic (20 degree) rather than the usual 8 degree optic of the M60's.
ElectronGuru has one of these that I have gotten to try out, IMO they were the best dropin of their time.
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There are also reasonably uncommon and relatively desirable (IMO) out-of-production Malkoff dropins:
- The first production run of M61W's & M31W's @ 5000K tint
- M60W
- M60 MC-E
- M30W - probably very rare, I've only seen a couple of these change hands @ CPF/MP.
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Anyone with more info on the rare Malkoff dropins, please post their pics or perhaps links to prior threads - I imagine that there are others who would find the older threads interesting.