[size=+1]Old vs. New HDS Stock Reflectors![/size]
Folks, one issue has come to my attention... a couple of the lights I've received for the CREEmation mod have the old-style stock HDS reflector. What's the difference, and why should we care? The original reflectors were NON-REMOVABLE... they seem literally to be part of the body itself, making the mod substantially more difficult... to do it, I'll need to cut the stock reflector out of the light before proceeding! That of course brings along with it some additional risk, though I'd like to think I can pull it off without problems.
For those who have already send me their HDS lights, I'll contact you if there's a problem, so no worries there. One way or another we'll figure out what to do.
For anyone about to send in your light to be CREEmated, here's a quick photo showing the difference between the two reflectors, followed by some notes on how to tell without opening the light.
First note: please excuse the really crummy photo! It was taken VERY quickly and I subsequently adjusted the brightness and contrast to show the difference most clearly... so they're not terribly flattering photos for the lights themselves!
How do you tell the difference? The light on the left is the OLD-STYLE reflector, and the one on the right is the NEW-STYLE reflector. The key is to notice how the old-style metal does NOT reach all the way to the edge of the bezel... it changes to a hard anodized natural finish as one moves away from the edge of the reflector... by contrast, the one on the right clearly shows bare metal all the way to the edge of the bezel ring. If you see bare metal up to the edge of the bezel ring, you're looking at a new-style reflector and we've got absolutely no issues with modding your light.
If you happen to have the old-style, built-in reflector (the one on the left), we MIGHT be able to do the mod... I'm still working on that. If you have multiple lights and have a choice of which to send, choose one with a new-style reflector.
Thanks for reading!