Disappointment with Maelstrom MMU

weegidy

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Nov 11, 2012
Messages
132
Location
Arizona, USA
I just purchased a FourSevens Maelstrom MMU light. I love the astetic appeal of FourSevens lights, but I was not too thrilled with my first one, a Quark Pro QPL. My QPL was an OK light... It had a nice beam pattern with a very good hot spot and flood beam. The light was over driven, but I would never use it in turbo mode for more then a couple of minutes. I just lost that light, so I replaced it with the FourSevens MMU.

The MMU seems to be a great light. It stands apart because of its use of the Luminous SST-90 instead of a Cree emitter. When I finally got the light I was super psyched. I charged up the battery in a little make shift charger (while the FourSevens single bay charger comes). When I first turned the light on I was instantly disappointed. The beam pattern looked worse than the beam pattern of an incandescent mini mag. It was filled with about 4 tear drop shaped hot spots that were all concentric but leaving pointy ends coming from what should have been a circular hot spot. Not only were there points coming off of one half of the hot spot, but there was a black hole in the center of it because the reflector was not aligned with the LED. Along with the very bad beam pattern, there was also a blue ring that was coming out of the corner of the reflector.

The next thing I did was compare the output of this new light (the MMU) to the output of my Fenix TK45 (3x Cree XP-G emitters) which is rated 760lm. The MMU did not have nearly as much output as the TK45. Not only was the light dimmer, but the throw and flood beams were much worse.

I am going to contact FourSevens ASAP to try to get this figured out. I'm hoping that I just got a bad apple and that a simple replacement (either light or reflector) will fix all of my problems, but if that is not the case then I will be sending back my two batteries, charger, and light which cost a grand total of $170.

Here's the light just after opening. It looks very pretty.
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Here is the beam pattern from far away, close up, and the blue spill that is coming out the corner of the reflector.
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outersquare

Enlightened
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
351
Location
sokali
The SST90 is kind of dated now, I have a direct drive SST90 in a surefire 6PDL, and a C8 XML2 U2 is brighter.
 

weegidy

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Nov 11, 2012
Messages
132
Location
Arizona, USA
The SST90 is kind of dated now, I have a direct drive SST90 in a surefire 6PDL, and a C8 XML2 U2 is brighter.

The MMU-X with the XM-L2 actually has about the same luminosity as the MMU. I didn't realize that because the FourSevens site still says 640lm (another flaw). I should have purchased that one. I am very dissapointed with FourSevens. I really wish I had gone with the much cheaper SureFire P2X.
 
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