I am in the beginning stages of modding, I have a dr jones h17f that I bought from Richard at mtnelectronics. this is the 4th or 5th one I have gotten from him. they all work great until I start messing with them 
I double stacked 7135’s on the battery side and checked the led with each addition so that I would know they worked. all good until I tried adding double stack on the secondary 7135 channel for the lower modes. once I did that it blinked and randomly changed modes. I corresponded with Richard and he gave me a few pointers. I removed all of the double stack because he said that I may have damage them while trying to bend the legs. this didn’t solve it. then he asked if I left a mess of flux everywhere. which I did. so I cleaned that up and that fixed 90% of the problem. damaged 7135’s out of the way, and flux cleaned up. now the modes work great. the only problem now is the lower modes flicker after a few min. so I replaced the 2 7135’s on the led side that would be the lower modes and thought that I solved the problem but they ended up still flickering. so now I am just wondering if I have another set of faulty 7135’s or if it might be another component. any help from the pro’s would be much appreciated. also is there a way to test the 7135’s with a volt meter or resistance or something w/o having to solder it on and then power on the light for each one? thank you,
anybody? 
You know, I had the same problem on a H17F driver with the lowest modes flickering after a minute of being on. Sorry I don’t have a solution; I don’t use this driver any longer.
I assumed it was a bad 7135 chip, but I wonder if the driver design somehow has some part in the behavior.
I’ve got a H17F in my Reylight TI and it flickers, slightly, on the lowest mode. However, when I go to the next mode up…it doesn’t flicker. I’t running a triple Nichia 319AT set up.
hmmm…. good question,
maybe others will weigh in,
thank you for responding, I appreciate it.
trial and error with used 7135’s replaced the two on the led side and got rid of the flickering but also got rid of firefly and moonlight. so not sure if that means both were bad or if just one is bad or what. anybody got any ideas? it will be a week before I can order more 7135’s. I still wish someone knew a way to test the 7135’s one by one w/o having to solder them on the driver and then put the flashlight back together. any experts are welcome to help this newbie. thnx
I’m also experiencing flickering on lowest modes with h17f. This can’t really be a common thing with this driver can it? Same thing happened with a fet+7135 bistro I had recently
If it worked prior to modding, then my guess is something was damaged due to too much heat, there’s a bad solder joint somewhere, or there’s an intermittent short.
Sorry for the necro!
I received some H17F drivers. I installed one with triple Nichia 219c 5700K.
In the lowest mode it flickers as some have reported above.
However, my main question is: can we go to the true lowest mode (#1 firefly) with this kind of configuration? I tried going to that lowest mode, but when I select it (through the taps on the menu) the flashlight doesn’t seem to assume that supposed 1st level .
Is this normal?
Thanks in advance!
EDIT:
This is not a reply to myself, but it adds to what I noticed before. I was using a battery near 3.19V. Then, to configure higher modes (vs Turbo) I picked a 4.12V.
What I noticed in the lowest level I had configured was that it automatically raised in brightness. So, I went ahead and added & configured a lower level.
Then I replaced the almost full battery for the almost empty battery and what happened when I turned the flashlight ON was that the 1st (lowest level) was not lighting up, and the 2nd lowest level was with the amount of brightness that the other one should have.
So, please note that the battery voltage/status, does make influence in the configuration/functioning of the lowest levels (when normally it impacts mostly the highest levels).
Maybe this is known, but I just wanted to share! 