Here's me being adventurous. :) You know what modders say about it being addictive? Well, it is. This one popped into my head one night, as it has probably popped into the heads of anyone bold enough to open an LTTO tagger and see that the finger guard is completely empty. After deciding that even a neophyte such as myself can probably accomplish this mod, I dove right into it and took a tagger apart just to be sure. I then asked for, and received, some very valuable advice on the LTAG board. Basically, the hurdles were to move or install a new reload button, and then to cover the holes left by the removal of the reload lever and finger guard. After removing the reload lever, I took out my Dremel rotary tool (a Mini-Mite, actually, but it works) and cut away the plastic of the finger guard, then did some quick touch ups to carve the excess down to the tagger. The finger guard removal left a couple small holes in the tagger, and the reload lever left a BF Hole to fill or cover.
I went to Radio Shack and found a button, part #275-646, a normally open momentary pressbutton switch that both looks and works/fits great. I drilled the required 1/2" hole in the opposite side of the hinge feature, which took care of removing the hinge post inside. I installed the button before wiring it to make sure it fits, and it was perfect. If you read the LTAG board thread, you'll see that TagFerret suggested soldering the new button directly to the PCB that the old button connects to. Well, after taking the tagger apart enough to SEE where that is, I decided my meager soldering skills were not yet up to that challenge. Instead, I decided to solder the new button right to the PCB that the old button is still on, leaving both buttons functional, but essentially in parallel, but not risking the more dense and sensitive "interconnect" PCB. Fortunately, after a little preparation (tinning things) and letting my soldering iron warm up completely, maybe a little "you can do its" inside my head, I managed to get the soldering done with apparently no shorts. I put it back together, put the batteries in, and fired it up. AND IT WORKS! YIPPEE!!!! :) Here's a shot of the modded tagger, yet to have it's holes filled.
Instead of filling in the holes and painting it properly like a good modder would, I copped out and found some colored duct tape to cover the holes. It's not the right green, but it's green, and easy to apply. :) After having played with this one a bit recently, I've decided that it's just not as convenient and intuitive as the lever. Since there's no handle in front, there's no firm grip for the other hand to get leverage on the function/megashot button, and now the new reload button. I don't plan to mod any other deluxes in this fashion, and I don't really recommend it to others. For a silent reload, I'd recommend simply removing the clicker in the handle instead. I have recently balanced out the problem caused by this mod with the Auto-Fire-On-Lock Mod. In fact, this is the Deluxe that I'll be hacking at whenever there's a mod for a Deluxe style tagger that sounds like fun.