LED upgrade choices for my HDS U60?

I bought my HDS EDC U60 summer 2005. Upgraded it to use Seoul P4 USXOI LED in spring 2007.

It's been over 2 years since my last upgrade and I'm wondering if there's any good LEDs to upgrade to now? Anything that would be a significant increase in output?

I know there's the XP-G, but it requires tools I don't have. There's the K2, but that seems like it needs to be altered a bit too

The K2 isn't much more difficult than installing the P4 was. I put one in my Novatac. You just have to trim the corners of the plastic emitter body. My U60 GT has a U-bin P4 in it now. Any day now I should have some XPG R5's and one is going in the HDS.

It the outpower of the K2 noticably brighter?

aceo07 said:

It the outpower of the K2 noticably brighter?

Click to expand...

I put one in an 85P Novatac that already had a U-bin P4 in it and I was impressed by the improvement. Part of the increased brightness though is because the beam is tighter, similar to the original Luxeon in your HDS. There are a number of threads on this subject already.

Thanks. I've been inactive here for a while so I'm just getting back up to speed on what's new.

I'll search for some threads. I'm really interested in upgrading it, but only if it's better without any sacrifice in beam or runtime.

I know the feeling. There have been a few times I've been away for awhile and had to play catchup.

What do you mean by "better without any sacrifice in beam."
Do you want to keep the floody beam of your P4?
The K2 TFFC will have a tighter beam that looks more like the beam
the original luxeon III that came in your light had. For beam smoothness
I don't know how it will be with the smooth HDS reflector. Mine was in a
Novatac with a textured reflector and it looked good.

I put an XPG-R5 on a 10mm board in my HDS U60GT last night.
I'll do a thread with details later. No special tools were needed. I used
side cutters and a utility knife to trim the board. The results look the same as
in the Novatac XPG link. Beam quality is good.

Here are some of the recent HDS/Novatac modding threads:

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/246259

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/227066

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/244730

kz1000s1 said:

What do you mean by "better without any sacrifice in beam."
Do you want to keep the floody beam of your P4?
The K2 TFFC will have a tighter beam that looks more like the beam
the original luxeon III that came in your light had. For beam smoothness
I don't know how it will be with the smooth HDS reflector. Mine was in a
Novatac with a textured reflector and it looked good. ...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the links, I've looked over them the last couple of days.

Sorry to be vague. I did mean the smoothness of the beam, specifically with the smooth HDS reflector. I haven't see any pictures from an HDS w/ K2. I have read a couple of comments that said there were artifacts. So, I'm not really sure how it is.

Though, being that CPF is a trap... I've gone ahead and bought a couple of K2s to try out. I'll probably find out in a couple of weeks when I get a chance to try it. I have poor skills at modding, so hopefully my HDS will come through ok.

I look forward to your HDS + XPG thread.