1/2 the price of a Solitaire with room for a decent pill(for its size) but yeah, modding is often an irrational thing to do. I have the chips, the emitter, and the copper. All I need to buy is a $.50 board and the battery. My mods usually end up decreasing the value of the light(sometimes to zero).
@ $2.98 and if you’re a skilled modder, I think it’s almost criminal if it doesn’t get upgraded and shown off in various permutations. 
8)
I wonder if there’s a reflector that’ll fit if you nix the lense? You know make it into the Baddest As* AAA/10440 circular spot-thrower out there. ’Course the lense it comes with will potentially give it throw too I suppose. I believe there’s enough room in that head for a pretty deep reflector though. 
H)
The reflector from my TF mini fits in the head but not the “throat”. An 18mm tir would work fine though. I like the beam as it is but that will change with a different emitter(likely squarish instead of perfect circle). With the reduced current supply of a 10440, I think the most usefull light will be a single mode from a sine hardwired(no pcb)7135 chip at ~350mA. The battery can fit into the head somewhat so this could also get a Match or JohnnyMac mini mod.
up to a 10440 optional configuration. Is there anything that would be feasible and still perform decent with that or even an alkaline?
Afaik, there are no boost drivers that small that can also handle 10440s.
in your spare time? Should be a piece of cake! 
I'd be hard pressed to even solder a wire onto something that small let alone do that. :(
I really need to get better at soldering...
I think boost drivers need an inductor which takes up a lot of space. Usually more than is available in a AAA light. The driver in this one might be a joule thief type but I’m outside of my area if knowledge so that is just a WAG. This light might also be a good place for a qtc tab and no driver. New member Wquiles supposedly has a sales thread on the joule thief type and they can also be had from the sandwich shoppe.
type led, right? It requires a boost of its own I take it? I don’t know enough about these different kinda drivers to ask the right questions. :bigsmile:
Ordered a couple efest imr’s and 2 xp-g2’s and 2-14mm xp boards from IS. While there I saw a 1AAA 500 mA driver Dia. and nabbed it too. There’s plenty of room in the head to use one of them with an alky. They are not constant current. As the battery voltage drops, the current drops as well. Could use a nimh but have to be careful not to kill the battery. Won’t use it on this one but it could go into a “gift” light.
I remembered I got these from DX a while back…………well they fit this light perfectly. The OP aluminum reflector base sits essentially flush with the rear of the head when this lense is installed with it. It’s a pretty dang deep reflector too. 
Very nice quality for the 4-pak bucks.
http://dx.com/p/18mm-12mm-aluminum-textured-op-reflector-for-cree-led-emitters-4-pack-14598
http://dx.com/p/glass-lens-for-flashlights-18mm-10-pack-5630
I’ll take all you can make at that price!
Have you fired it up with these yet? Don’t want to wait a month for something that doesn’t work.
Ya I did just last night. I didn’t change out the super-bright but I soldered up a deal quick and dirty, installed the reflector, glass lens, chucked of course the asperic retainer, and torched her up on an eneloop. I now get this GREAT gradual soft very wide floody dispersion beam out of that OP stellar aluminum reflector that IMO is absolutely perfect as a quasi-mule and reading light. Very useful I think.
I’ll try and post pics later on here on what I did. I’m sure your pro-version will make mine look like poopy but like I say, it was literally a 20 minute job once I figured out the conductive solution to the top-unanodized battery tube obstacle and you’ll note with the loss of the aspheric retainer moving things back to the postive anode, something has to be done to compensate and complete a circuit. Listen to me, I sound like I really know what the h*ll I’m talking about here.
I think this thing should get pro-modded up the ying-yang. The beauty of it as you prolly know is the ample room available for sundry pill alterations and emitter shenanigans. H)
My builds have been described as “steam punk”, not beautiful, but they do work. I don’t sell them because they lack the finish that artists like Justin can provide. I’m a flashaholic in that I see a light and want to dissect it(the poor bugger). My version of creativity is a bit more grubby so when you say “pro” I have to laugh. This light is nice in that it has very high quality machined threads, is already a cross between a Maglite AAA and a Solitaire in that it is single AAA but has more mass and a larger head than a solitaire. It lacks only a decent emitter and either a boost regulator+AAA or a 10440+7135’s or qtc to make it rock.
The first thing that came to mind was that iconic bullseye scene at the beginning of every Bond film. Perfect circle with blood running down.
This was a quick and dirty 20 minutes worth of modding keeping the stock 5mm led just to show comparison to the stock aspheric set-up. Rufusbuck and hopefully O-L, will be doing a more advanced mod than this here shortly so stay tuned for better stuff. But this should give ya a general idea…….
Here’s the stock configs/stock light, with the after-market reflector etc., That black housing in the upper right screws in nice and crisply in the head which then compresses against the aspheric lens below it. It’s a bit taller than the OP reflector so that means contact-mods needed to be done in order for things to work. The aspheric as mentioned can be reversed which will then give ya sorta of a flood like the OP reflector mod that follows. I think that’s cool. Especially since this light is so easy to take apart all the way around that doing so literally takes less than 15 seconds. Prolly adding an 18mm o-ring to the aspheric and even the glass flat-lens wouldn’t hurt either. There’s a groove already inside the head for it so it should work. Kinda funny that it doesn’t come with one though. Nonetheless the housing does a nice job securing everything down anyway.
The aspheric a-lit and the OP reflector. It’s a decently deep OP reflector too for the size.
The ‘cartoonish’ perfect wall spot through the stock aspheric……both held about 3’ from the wall. Essentially ZERO spill.
Then flood mode with the OP reflector and flat-glass lens….
Then only about 12” from wall with stock aspheric. Condensed & quite brighter.
Top-shot with stock aspheric……
Top-shot with OP reflector. A lot floodier with a soft spread……both shots held about 12” above the table.
Here’s the after-market OP reflector in the head. As you can see it really fits perfectly like it was made for it. ……note the nice threads, and these weren’t even cleaned yet. That’s how shiny they come out of the package.
In order to make a negative connection work I had to solder-up that spring and the copper tiny washer. I reversed the spring so that the narrow end is soldered to the driver-positive because the wide-end of the spring was too wide and would get too close to the negative driver contact ring much less even be solderable - hence another reason for that little copper washer getting put on the fat end as the dinky AAA positive batt end wouldn’t be able to make solid contact. Btw, that copper washer’s hole in my view may actually help with the positive anode of the batt to ‘secure’ itself better in contact and perhaps assist from keeping any cocking and slide-off from going on should it be dropped, etc. But that’s just conjecture on my part. Although whether it works or not I kinda like it just from an engineering viewpoint.
Then I took a piece of 26awg (insulated a’ course) soldered it to the negative driver contact and then sandwiched the tinned wire in between the unanodized tube end, and then screwed it back together. Ya can’t even tell from the outside that this was done. It screwed together back easily and without forcing it too. These are small parts so ya gotta be fairly precise with the soldering gun.
Side by side. The mod is on the right.
I wonder what the stock circuit does in terms of voltage and current. I went home last night and in the mailbox were the Efest IMR 10440’s and a 500 mA x 13 mm boost driver and 14 mm xp-g2 R5 3D from IS. Nice that Craig is only 60 miles away. I’m sure that stock circuit only puts out in the 10’s of mAs I’ll have to pick up another light for a side by side between the aspheric and the Cree when the reflector arrives. I like that this light is smaller than a AAA Minimag but has more mass than a Solitaire.
Capacitor’s almost as big as entire board.
That’s an inductor, not a capacitor.