Today a mod that gave me one of my best flashlights ever (but not perfect of course )
Yesterday I received a Sofirn SP33 single26650tubestyle flashlight and I could not believe how nice it was, I love the design, it is built very solid and as vestureofblood already noticed in his video-review this form and size feels incredibly gooood in the hand. I even do not mind that it is somewhat bigger than my DQG26650, it looks better and has more to offer (like a proper beam that goes a distance instead of a wide flood). The UI is ok but not perfect (1100 lumen high, the low, 16 lumen, should be lower of course and has no direct access from off, and I’m not too fond of memory), can’t notice PWM, the used XP-L has a very nice neutral tint, the beam from the perfect smooth reflector is as perfect as an XP-L can produce.
This is a proper flashlight!
Today I got the 4000K 90+ CRI Samsung LH351D leds from BLF-member AEDe. After a jubilant report about this led from maukka, and remembering TA’s very promising test of another version of the LH351D I wanted to use it in the SP33.
Of course you loose considerable output when going high CRI, so to compensate it somewhat the SP33 got some extra modifications:
*as said, the XP-L led was swapped for the Samsung. I found the stock MCPCB to be DTP so I used it again (Dale in his review of the SP33 said that his stock board was non-DTP)
*ledwire thickness went up to 20AWG
*0.1Ohm was soldered parallel to the .068 Ohm current limiting resistor (=not a sensing resistor as Dale mentioned in his review)
*both springs were bypassed. Managed to break open the tail cap btw, it was a tough job, a kind of hard golden coloured rosin was in the threads, not normal threadlock.
*the switch button did not engage the switch very well, had to press deep and hard to get contact, so I lengthened the switch a bit by letting a drop of Norland-64 UV-harden on top of it.
Result: this my new favorite camping light, everything said about this led is true: output very good, tint great, CRI wonderful, beam in a smooth reflector great (one of the best ever with little tint shift and certainly better than the beam from the stock XP-L).
Current is now 3.8A on high, output 950 lumen at 30 seconds, very useful numbers for this size flashlight. The output stepdown at 5 minutes from the SP33 driver is appropriate.
I’m sorry to not have taken pictures from the modding steps, will do better next time