Bummer, Washington state politicians are horrendous with their taxation. It was appalling what they were trying to do with sin taxes and e-cigs earlier this year. Good grief.
As far as building a complete custom light (in a convoy XX host), the owner charges something south of a mere $5 to put an entire light together for you with the first class components you select via his site. Amazingly vast selection, and it's really hard to surpass $40 for a custom light that blows away the specs of the "premium" shelf brands. What a fantastic company...
However, after having said all that, my absolute favorite lights that I own currently are two Eagletacs; a D25LC2 Color, and a G25C2 mkII NW "kit version." I EDC the D25, and jacket carry the G25 when I go for walks. They aren't the cheapest lights, but I have found the price of an Eagletac is well justified because their user interface is hands down the most useful and best. You just twist the head for brightness modes, and you twist the head back and forth to access a plethora of hidden blinky modes (or in the case of the D25, LED color selection). You can pre-select the brightness before even turning the light on, and all of it is with momentary on inclusion. It may not seem like a huge deal, but in use, the user interface actually is a huge difference maker. The Eagletac user interface is so vast and intuitive, you almost feel like "Neo" from the "Matrix" films controlling them.
The Thrunite TN12 is the best value "premium" shelf brand light out there currently from what I can tell. I've looked at countless beam shots of it, and it seems to be a real nice balance between throw and flood. It has extremely well spaced modes that are lacking in other shelf brand lights, just a tad bigger than a true EDC light, and it's price is a dream compared to other "premium" shelf brand lights in the same arena.
Cheers
