Great locks and as a relatively inexpensive ‘all-rounder’ very difficult to beat.
Only ever used to see and use 2 variants here in the UK, don’t know if there were any others.
The commonest was the 6804 which was the basic VdS1 lock (7 lever if I remember right), and the slightly thicker cased 6880 which was VdS2 and 9 lever.
The fact they had slim key bits designed to fit down a combination spindle hole and foot-printed to an S&G or LaGard combo was brilliant. Customers who were fed up bending down on hands and knees entering combinations could finally kiss the whole combo nightmare goodbye. The changeable function was also a good feature but probably used less in practice than as a selling point.
Always found they needed the the correct escutcheon guides fitting accurately on the door front, especially the longer keys passing through thicker doors. Most problems that I encountered were down to poor alignment allowing the keys to wear the die-cast alloy. But then you’ve got that with any long safe keys working through thick doors, Mauer, Wittkopp etc aren’t really any different. Needless to say they’re not of 1970s Kromer Novum quality or durability, but for the price and convenience of a quick combo lock conversion I found them great.
In fact I still use a couple 6804s on my workshop safes- at only 4 inches long the short length keys are bearable on your everyday bunch of keys, so overall they get the 🙁y): from me
