You can usually see the gold bond wires in white LEDs regardless of the type, sometimes they aren`t so clear though. Sometimes you can make out the shape of the die too, other times the gold wires dissapear into the yellow muck and there could be anything under there! My guess is that the phosphor in a rank-S LED is a little thinner, therefore you can see more of the wirebonds and where they attach to the die. A thicker coating could absorb more light- maybe this is why rank-S ones are brighter- a thinner coating? Someone here will know better than me, I believe he lives in Seattle and has a very cool scooter that looks like a UFO from behind
This is as good an excuse as any, for me to show an extreme macro shot I took of the innards of a white LED a while ago. I think this was a wide angle one, but the die cup/phosphor/bond wires should be the same, it`s only the lens that`s different...
WOW!!! I just got my ARC LE the other day and I am impressed. I compared it to my LS Kiddy headlamp conversion and the brightness is pretty close. It looks like I can see some gold wires in the LED and was wondering if it is some sort of LS variation? The LEDs I order from theledlight.com dont look like this. WHERE CAN I GET ME SOME OF THAT!!!