As I was annoyed by the severe lack of brightness of the 1-8 buttons, and the message from Squarp that it would most likely not be possible to make them brighter, I took Hermod out of the rack and looked at those big lumps of silicone. As a photographer, it was quite clearto me, that there were two problems, and therefore two ways of improving brigthness.
- Light spill. The light simply comes out of the sides of the long piece of silicone, so too little light reaches above the front panel.
- Too much diffusion. The light has to travel about 20mm through opaque silicone.
The remedy to 1. is easy and absolutely non-destructive:
First I unscrewed the four nuts holding the front panel. Then I removed the floppy silicone pad with the knobs.
I took some aluminum foil and gave the shiny side a bit of SprayMount (glue spray). Then I cut 8 strips of 50mm x 12mm which I tightly wrapped aroung the fat bit of the silicone “towers”.
Done. This gives you twice the light already, and you can start with that.
If you feel you need more (and I wanted to take it to the max), you can do this about 2.:
(This step is destructive, but if all goes wrong, I assume that you can order some now silicone pads from Squarp. But no promise. If you screw this one up, don´t blame me. That being said, this is also an easy fix, but may need a rather steady hand (or better tools)).
In order to get more light to the top of the knob, I took my Dremel and a small drill (3mm, I think). It needs to be able to go between the two black conductive pads, without touching them.
Then I held the Dremel to the table and took one knob firmly between my fingers, with one finger on the top surface of the knob. And proceeded to drill a hole from right between the black pads, and almost to the top surface, where I left about 2mm unharmed silicone. Repeat for all 8 buttons.
This gives you a bright center spot of the knobs that in my estimate, again doubles the amount of light.
It is hard to judge from a phone picture, but I can assure you, that I have a LOT more light in those buttons now. Very satisfied with the operation.
