Tuesday 5 April 2011

simple mods: petzl myo xp

Why oh why oh why can’t the big gear companies get the simple things right?

Take Petzl for example, and one of their best selling headtorches – the Myo XP. This torch is owned and used by more outdoorsy people than I care to think about because it’s powerful and effective and just works. (Ok, so there have been issues in the past with these torches, something to do with a batch with a wiring fault, but I’m not going to get into that on here – the new ones are all good as far as I know). My issues are far simpler…

The Myo is my torch of choice for pretty much everything, from night time searches, to early morning approaches to Alpine climbs, to evening descents from the Ben, to just finding stuff in the car in the dark – this torch does it all most of the time. It is however, quite a long way from perfect.

Issue 1: The on/off button is, quite frankly, rubbish. Tiny, utterly unusable with Mitts on and next to impossible with gloves, and annoyingly difficult to press if the torch is sat flush in it’s cradle. But there’s nothing I can do about that so I’ll just have to make do for now.

Issue 2: The diffuser. This is the main reason I chose the Myo actually – a good, high output luminosity, and a diffuser lens to spread the beam (great for snow descents!). I love the diffuser, I think it’s great when I’m using it, however, when I’m not using it, the thing is an utter pain in the backside. Why do I say this? After all, you just flip the thing down out of the way so what could possibly be the problem? Well, you see, the manufacturers in their infinite wisdom, failed to realise that with the lens flipped down, light from the LED gets perfectly diffracted and reflected straight down into your eyes through the little lever knob bit on the diffuser…utterly utterly naff!

Anyway, whilst I can’t do much about the aggravation caused by Issue 1, I have taken a simple, yet effective step to eliminate Issue 2:

SDC12885 

Matt black enamel paint. Simple, doesn’t void the warranty, and it works! No more glare in the eyes for me! It will be interesting to see how long the paint stays on there before I have to recoat it, but for the short term I’m one happy bunny and highly recommend this little modification to all Myo users – go to it!

4 comments:

  1. I put black insulating tape on mine in just the same place ;o)

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  2. Lara - it had tape for a while, but then it fell off!

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  3. I used a bit of my girlfriends fingernail polish on the end, works a treat!

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