I don’t personally own any Vinh lights, but I think he provides a great service to the community. He supplies quality modded flashlights with good customer service. His prices are quite reasonable given that it is his business. It’s appropriate he charge something for his time and materials spent on his mods.
However, Vinh’s services are not for everyone. If you’re a reasonably skilled modder you can probably make something equivalent to a Vinh light for less money plus have the satisfaction of having something you modded yourself.
But there are many flashaholics who are not modders. For them, having a service like Vinh available to provide quality modding work is invaluable.
It isn’t all fun & games modding lights, that’s for sure
From what I’ve seen Vinh is honourable & charges a realistic price for most work he does, plus the profit eating experimentation & aftersales stuff he deals with too, I can only imagine…
For him it is a business which pays the bills so of course it would not be wise to share specific hard earned knowledge.
He’s not perfect, no one is but he will usually always work with you on a problem.
It is a loss to this forum that some peoples personal inadequacies, cheapness & not understanding or fear of willing to learn what is actually involved that brings the negative sentiments.
If you moan about the cost, try it yourself
Vinh also indirectly contributes to the flashlight world by pioneering new ideas. I’m sure many manufacturers observe and get ideas from Vinh’s creations. Vinh showed hard data on how well the White 1 and White 2 performs in the D4S. Let’s see if Emisar will follow suit.
If you need to know how it’s done ,you could always buy one of his lights & reverse engineer it ,take it apart ,photo all the parts & share them .
That’s what people sometimes do to the other manufactures
Oops all the vihn lovers are gonna hate me now
I would like to add he’s quite generous too. Beside doing charity works, if you ask him if he has spare parts laying around that he stripped from old lights before doing the mod, he will actually give it to you at no cost; he even pay for shipping.
My Astrolux A01 was not working properly, kept on flickering. So I was curious if I can put a Tool AAA driver in it (I like how it starts on Med). Knowing he modded a few Tools; he should have a few drivers laying around. So I contacted him. Sure enough, he has 2; shipped both to me for free and paid for postage. He also apologized for not having more as the extras were shipped to another seller here on BLF.
I have two Vinh lights, one of them directly transacted with him. ( It was my Maxtoch SN6X-2X).
Yes, he is a no-nonsense guy, too generous to a fault, a gentleman who makes a living out of his hobby, and of course, for people like me who don’t know modding and are willing to pay for his hard work.
I feel sad as some members here speak negative of him even without any direct, first-hand dealing with the guy.
It’s acceptable for someone to be critical about him not sharing any of his mods. It’s completely up to Vinh though if he chooses to do that. Modding flashlights is a two way street and i’m sure he has in the past (maybe still does?) get inspiration from other modders who DO share their work. I would guess the vast majority of his customers would not even attempt most of his mods even if he gave step by step instructions.
Let me put this another way. Look at people like ToyKeeper who contribute high quality firmware under open source licensing. TA driver designs. Koef/Djozz doing LED tests on their own dime. Various members contributing to OSHPark (drivers, switch boards, etc). BLF flashlight collaborations. All these people are respected because they contribute and push this hobby to more people and share their ideas.
Vinh could be one of those people too i’m sure with little impact to his business but it would seem he chooses to run his business only, and that’s fine too I guess.
You don’t have much time when you run a business. Putting 10-12 hours a day is quite normal. When he’s not modding lights, I am sure he’s testing out ways to improve lights/drivers/projects or how to better run his business. And there are also inquires from customers via email and has to maintain his sub-forum on CPF. And don’t forget he has a wife and family. I don’t think he would have much spare time to contribute.
I like Vinh and it’s unfortunate he doesn’t feel comfortable to frequent this forum.
One thing I will say is if he did frequent here then there would be a bunch of groupies showing off how bright their Vinh light is when all they did was plug in a battery and turn it on. I like seeing that when someone has done the mod themselves.
Good on him for having groupies but I’m glad it’s not like that here.
Bit of a shame that almost nobody realises that Vinh is member of this forum (last seen 31 months ago).
I read some of his posts and he gave useful tips on “how to …”. Guess the non-sharing idea is a bit one-sided. The reactions of those who actually had contact with him are absolute positive. So why the bitterness.
Vinh is Vinh, and the rest of us is not. Same as I am me and you are not. Live and let live.
Maybe the title of this thread should read: “What make him so special”.
Let’s say that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. He is a really nice guy, working his buns off.
But his special skills set thrives better in the CPF-pond than in ours. Because we like to do things our selves.
If all you had to do was to install a chip in it to gain performance and I told you where to install it, I won’t charge you a thing. Now if you couldn’t or did not want to install the chip, then yes I would charge you for installing it.
We all are free to do as we wish. Its his business to do as he wishes and that’s fine. All I was saying is that is not in the spirit of BLF. It’s great that he offers this service as some members would never own a hot rod light without him.
Like I said imagine all those who have contributed here in complete silence. This page would not exist Flashlight User Interface Cheatsheets
I don’t know the guy, it’s just my opinion from how I see it.
Well that’s just you, man.
That’s not how it works in the real world.
In the real world you have to pay for car ECU tuning software if you want to get the extra performance because someone spent a lot of time and effort to extract, change, and test the code.
You can install it yourself, with your own computer, with just software, not even a physical chip needed.
If you want the shop to install it then you pay a bit extra but 90% of the cost is just the software which is several hundred or thousand dollars.
This is if your not a modder, again this would apply to a person that can’t do it themselves.
They are forums just like this one for sharing ECU tunning. https://www.ecuedit.com/
Same applies to flashlights, 99% of people cannot do it themselves so it’s nice to have options that you can buy already modded.
I can also assure you that 99% of car enthusiasts are also not capable of reprogramming an ECU.
