I am suddenly not pleased at all with Surefire.

I still like the lights don't get me wrong...............................

OK so here I am playing with this E2L Cree 2 stager I recently got and thinking about the hit in runtime you get over the 1 stage.

Sure the output went up but I still felt something was wrong.

Thus thinking, I looked into that optic and guess what I saw?

3 bond wires instead of 4. Yes only 3, they are quite easy to see. The missing bond wire is one of the ones that should cross the black line so I am not just missing it.

I realize they don't state bins or anything but I am still let down.

Does everybody else have 3 bond wires or is mine a big screw up?

Most likely a very, very rare flaw.

Phone surefire?

So much for using premium bins....

I have a SF L1 that has 3 bond wires...this was when the Cree L1's first came out months ago. I would have done an emitter swap but the LED is perfectly focused by the TIR and it has a great tint.

I've since gone through 1 KX1 and 3 E2DLs and all have had 4 bond wires. None of these had the tint or focus of the L1 though...

Just checked and.... 3 here as well in my E2L. Be at peace Sgt. LED

EDIT: To be honest, I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know enough about LEDs to know what 3 versus 4 bond wires would indicate...?

:nana:

Man you guys got me worried, dug out my L1 and it's 4 wire. Although that's not saying much since later P4 also came in 4 wire...

jzmtl said:

Man you guys got me worried, dug out my L1 and it's 4 wire. Although that's not saying much since later P4 also came in 4 wire...

Click to expand...

Just checked my lights.

L1 - I'm pretty sure its three. I bought this over the summer.

But both my E2DL and E1B are for sure four. I bought these over the summer as well.

But, my E2L which I just bought a month ago, is three wire.

So the threes are from a shittier bin hence worse tint? Enlighten me.

I'm actually having a hard time using my Surefires now that I'm so used to the Malkoff "W" tint. I feel spoiled.

My E2DL has 4 wires. :thinking:

I bought it right before the price increase. I think 3 wire Crees are just older, not neccessarily shittier. My older Fenix's had 3 wires; the newer ones have 4.

3 bond wires means its a P2-P4 bin Cree, which is lower efficiency. This is interesting because SureFire advertises it uses "premium bins", which those have not been for at least 1.5 years.


Tint is not directly related to the flux bin, it's a separate ranking.

Marduke said:

3 bond wires means its a P2-P4 bin Cree, which is lower efficiency. This is interesting because SureFire advertises it uses "premium bins", which those have not been for at least 1.5 years.


Tint is not directly related to the flux bin, it's a separate ranking.

Click to expand...

Thank you Marduke - learn something new everyday!

Very very interesting.

Well I have to say it, 1 more point in favor of Fenix EagleTac Deerelight Lowes-TaskForce Lumapower NItecore Novatac RaLights DX .

This is a sad day

Wait, aren't there official data on what emitters are used in SF lights? I thought it was a given...

Let's wait for more info before we make three bond wires wrong. At one point I believe it was noted that three three bond wired Cree's had a lower vf than the four bond Cree's. Now that would be good, at least to me, a more effecient LED that would run longer with less current. Now, I might be wrong here, but it sort of sounds good to me, and good is better than not good. Then again maybe the reverse is true and four bond wires is better than three........................:green:

Bill

The original Cree P4s had three bond wires. I'm not sure if they were up to four before they moved onto the Q2 bins.

So would that mean the new E2Ls are running on P4s just like the 2007s?

Possibly do a runtime/output test to see if you are getting at least the advertised performance?

I'm sure they were premium at the time SF decided to use them, although I didn't know that the emitter bin was such an important part of a SF flashlight.

I mean, come on... it's a SF.

Just out of curiosity, what is the serial number of your E2DL? Mine is 07299 and had a 4 bond wire LED.

Perhaps you have an E2DL from early production and it just happened to sit on a retail shelf for a long time before you received it.

mine is with 3 wires.
so far no complaint since i got the driver swapped and swapped the TIR to McR19mm XRE as well.

This could explain why there is so much variation in the output of SF LED's. I have a SF E1B that isn't as bright as some other E1B's out there, yet I believe it meets SF minimum spec. SF never says exactly what they use, so they could put P4's in some lights, and Q5's in others. They don't owe us any specific bin since they don't advertise what bin they use. As long as it makes 65 lumens, 80 lumens, or whatever the spec is, that is all they owe us. Someone might get lucky and instead of 80 lumens they get 100 lumens or more.

I'll have to try and look into my E1B and L1 to see if I can see 3 or 4 bond wires.