After some weeks with life getting in the way, I had some time to spare today for a mod I’ve been planning for many weeks. I got hold of this host nearly 2 months ago and had to wait for various bits and pieces to arrive.
This one is an FW1A - not one of the very early ones, but one with an FW1A Pro reflector. If I ever get my hands on an FW1A with the original reflector then I would keep the reflector and only consider swapping the emitter, but for this one I decided (as for my previous FW1A Pro mods here and here) to upgrade the driver, swap the emitter, add Aux and drop in a TIR.
The host has no branding or markings, except for a very small serial or model number on the tail. It has a plain button, which I much prefer over the ones with the Lumintop logo engraved onto them.
The original emitter was a 6500K XP-L HI. Against my usual preferences, I wanted to keep a cool CCT for this light, but with higher CRI. So this time I swapped in a 5700K 519A, keeping the dome on.
To maximise the efficiency of the light, I gave it a lume1 upgrade. I’m keeping the standard (fw3x-lume1-rgbswap) Anduril 2 version with activated FET. To maximise output but avoiding damaging the emitter, I’ll use a Samsung 35E battery with low CDR.
The Aux are added with a Lume x1 Tri-LED board that is filed down to fit. I chose orange, pink and ice-blue Aux LEDs. As usual with a tri-LED board, it took a few tries to get a good balance between the different colours’ brightness.
The optic is the one I used in my previous FW1A Pro mods. I bought a couple more from a reddit user to make the most of the shipping costs from the US when I bought another light. I’m not sure yet whether this is the best choice, I also have some Ledil Leila optics and I haven’t decided which gives the best beam.
