Well, after a bit of venting in this thread I decided to revisit my pitiful aa-s1. Please don't read the tone wrong, as I'm having a lot of fun playing around with these things (wouldn't do it otherwise). Fired up the soldering iron and had at it. This time I decided to give the golden dragon emitter another chance and installed it with a known good driver. Also took time to re-flow the solder on the emitter itself (looked frosty...never good). The results were better than expected. Now I can see what all the fuss is about with the osram emitters. Take a look below as how it compares to a few of my other lights. The tree is @ 25yds away.
AA-S1 on alkaline
H51 (alkaline)
Trustfire XP-EF21 (alkaline)
Unfortunately I jumped the gun and didn't take any "before" shots of the aa-s1, but suffice to say it was only marginally brighter than the typical GITD tailcap. The driver I used with the osram was this one and works wonderfully on el cheapo alkalines. I tried it with a 14500 and it got angry and blue....as seen here:
This doesn't bother me, since I plan on running it strictly off the alkies... In usage, it actually compares favorably now with the H51. It's not as bright and is more floody, but the warm even beam pattern is now quite pleasant. While I was at it, I also snapped a few shots of some other lights:
This is my edc keychain light. The LDO1 is a monster on 10440....for about 10min :)
The next two are ones I never see a lot of beam shots on:
Zebralight SC60
And the MG P-Rocket XPG (OP) from shiningbeam:
A note on the two pics above: In a ceiling bounce test, the P-Rocket is only marginally brighter (if any) than the SC60, just a heck of a lot more throwy. I love em both :)
Well, there you have it. I got sidetracked with the camera, but the gist of it is I'm now happy with my modded aa-s1. The culprit was either a bad driver or bad solder joint at the emitter.
Dang this is fun...
-Match