Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/10/27

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Subject: Re: Special M6's
From: Jeff Moore <jbm@instinet.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 12:22:21 -0500

> I recently saw a used chrome M6 for sale in a store. It had various parts
> on it, like the shutter speed wheel etc. in black rather than chrome. The
> asking price was about what you'd expect for a 'normal' used M6. Does
> anyone know about these chrome M6s with black parts?   

James Lager refers to these somewhat disparagingly in one of his books as 
`panda' M6es, and allows as how he doesn't find them pleasing to the eye.  
Funny thing is, he said nothing of the sort when he sold me mine (new, in the 
late Eighties) at Ken Hansen!  :-)

I happen to find the look rather fetching, although it could of course be that 
I've just grown acclimated to and fond of the looks of my own personal 
instrument;  but to me, a chrome-on-chrome M6 looks really bland!  In 
particular, the shutter-speed wheel in M6 flavor (straight vertical edge-cuts 
rather than any of the nice Machine Age knurling of earlier models) seems a 
washed-out, characterless thing in chrome.  The overly-clean Bauhaus-2000 
thing they were doing when they designed the M6 seems to cry out for black.

- -J