Who was in this hobby in 2011? I need a history lesson.

The SupFire M6 was the king of the triple kings, maybe back in 2013-2014 era. The BLF Q8 was modeled after it, but with the SkyRay Kung feature of 4 LED's. The M6 had a rock solid shell, solid shelf, etc. The early SRK's were XML T6's typically on alum non-DTP MCPCB's, one per LED, not one massive MCPCB they had later. It was not made to handle high amps. Richard was one of the first in M6 modding here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/25716. He offered the modded M6's til the Q8's came out -- I feel bad bout that one, the Q8 kind of put him out of the M6 mod biz.

After the SRK (triple), they had the 4 LED version (Kung), https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/19191, then after that, it grew exponentially in fake LED counts.

The original SRK was actually pretty good quality, real stainless steel bezel, nice finish: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/7224?destination=node/8435&420d_name=d9. The cnqualitygoods.com store had the best one at the time, referenced in this review.