Got my original NA40 updated with a piggyback'ed 17mm DEL driver running NarsilM - really nice now. Didn't take apart the switch but tied the red and green wires to the LED pin #3 and seems like I only got one working LED in there - seems to be RED but looks orange. In room light it appears only on one side of the switch but in the dark it's a definite orange and looks consistent throughout the switch - I like it .
It's a nice quality light all around - love the anodizing, SS bezel, square threads and separate charging circuit. At best I got about 17.5 amps out of it, 5950 @start, 4980 @30 secs (my lumens). Losing about 1000 lumens in 30 secs is excessive for sure. Not sure what's going on there - thinking the MCPCB mounting is not ideal. Maybe it's not tightly pressed down by the reflector, not sure.
The biggest issue I have is the weird battery tail (negative contact) setup. It's the oddest setup I've ever seen. It seems like a spring is just simply missing? stock LK's rattle and can't make contact. Typical magnets on the tail are too small in diameter -- totally weird stuff. Why??? Hope they fixed this up in the SE upgrade? I use solder blob top LK's with a magnet off centered on the tail - not ideal but no rattle and it basically works.
I stripped the stock driver to use as a contact board, epoxied the 17mm on top. Looks like the MCU is a ATTiny84, 14 pin surface mount, and some of the cap and resistor design closely matches the DEL driver designs. The 16 7135's are divided into banks, at least 3, maybe 4-5, not sure. Because the 84 has a ton of I/O pins, it makes it easy to do and you can optimize your mode sets to be full sets of 7135's at max output - no PWM's. I almost considered air-wiring in a ATTiny85 to use the existing 7135's and FET's, but would be a challenge for me.
Wish I knew the details of exactly what they changed in the SE model - for example "improved switch", well, what was improved? Could it be it stood out too far and was too stiff? Why was the reflector swapped and what's the advantages? I could speculate maybe it frees up space for the wiring - they had to epoxy up the exposed wires, so maybe there's some true interference going on there, maybe resulting in a poor MCPCB bonding to the shelf. Shame because it's a really nice light, great for modding. It's like a 26650 version of the C8F, but nice charging setup, better quality body, though the C8F isn't bad at all. The driver size of 32 mm is non-standard for us, sorry to say -- no one on BLF makes a 32 mm, or one that can be tailored to 32 mm as far as I know, but the piggyback works well.
Even with the issues, they are relatively minor. The original NA40 is a nice light for the money - I don't regret buying this one. The NA40SE hopefully improves on or eliminates these shortcomings.