L4 Color Comments And Did Anyone Notice This?

I just received an L4 from Ray, (thanks Ray!), and I like this light a lot. Ray advertised it as being slightly green and it is. The good thing is I think I like "slightly green" much better than the regular blue/violet of most Surefire LED heads. I have only owned a KL1 and two KL3's and the violet beams of those were okay but this slightly green color of the L4, I like much better. Maybe it's my old, tired eyes but I don't notice the green near as much as the violet. Sure, I wish they all were pure white but I think I can live with this much better!

Speaking of the L4, did any of you notice that it comes with special instructions to line up the grooves on the body and clickie tailcap to correctly "lockout" the light? The only problem is that there IS a groove on the body but NOT on the clickie tailcap! A small nitpick I know but why did SF include a special instruction sheet about this if they didn't even do it? One wonders! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I too noticed that the Z57 does not have a lock-out divot mark. Oh well...

I just checked mine, and sure as {vulgar term for feces}, there's no "witness mark" on the tailcap at all.

I think the solution here is to click the L4 on, unscrew the tailcap until the LED goes out, then click it again. The L4 should not "go off" in a box or bag then.

does this come from "old" instructions of the E2 type?
funny typo indeed.
bernhard

I found that if I line up the (www.surefire.com) on the tail cap with the pocket clip it is locked out. This may not be true with others though.
oldgrandpajack

Not true of mine.
If I tighten the tailcap all the way, the center of the "www.surefire.com" embossing is at about the 9:30 position in relation to the pocket clip (if you look down at the tail end and have the clip at the 12:00 position).
If the tailcap is unscrewed just 1/4 turn (to bring the center of the embossing to about the 6:30 position), it locks out.

I just eyeball mine... unscrew until the gap is the thickness of a penny. My "www.surefire.com" is at the 3:30 position, looking at the tail with the clip at 12:00, and unscrews to 11:30 before it darkens... this is with the tail facing me. it seems our tailcaps are 180 degrees out of phase. s/n A19875.

Let me try unscrewing my L4 tailcap *just* until it disengages, then spinning it 180° and putting it back on...nope, no change. s/n A00531

Gene,
I too have a greenish LED. It's in my modded KL1 and I agree with you. I prefer it to the blue/purple tints. Just wait until you use it outdoors, if you haven't already. Mine gave the impression of looking at a little piece of sunshine instead of subdued blue light. I'm keeping my greenie!

It just seems weird that such a quality manufacturer as SF would make such a glaring error. A notch on the body for nothing and even go to the trouble of including a card in the packaging pointing something out that isn't even there!

Chop,
I recently sold a MM with a BB400 and it always looked white to me. The gent who bought it said it had a green tint. I never noticed! I will say that the violet tints of the SF KL series heads seem to get more noticeable over time. I prefer the green because it looks fairly white to me.
Sure, some LED's are glaringly tinted but I think a lot of the complaints about SLIGHT color variations are in the eye of the beholder. Some see them, some don't.

After using Surefires for a while you learn to quickly lock them out by "feel", and the notch or absence of it becomes irrlevant.

Brightnorm

I have that same notch discrepancy I turn mine on and then crank the tail switch, twistie stile, till it goes off and then a bit more. I then marked the spot with a dot from a magic marker.

Green, yep, mines green but hardly noticeable except when put side by side with my Arc LSH that baby has the best light color of all my light.
Mike

I find the lack of the indent on the tailcap as being no big deal. To be honest, most of my E2E's don't lock-out like they should based on those mark locations anyway.

I agree Ray as spring tension will weaken some being under load and the marks will move away from each other over time. I realize "lockout" is easy and one can feel it after some use. It really is not that big of a deal but I just feel that SF shouldn't have put the stupid notch there in the first place! You of all people should know we CPFers are a nit-picky bunch! :>) Really great light though.