Good one Chris. 'Improve the breed' -The way to go. I remember the one I had, had a good heavy cable, but it had an 'in-cable' brake light switch which included a return spring, which meant that the initial pull amount just closed up the spring to operate the switch, then the brake operated.
Not a very clever piece of engineering. I ended up fitting the earlier TLS brake, which was very much better.
I have heard that those later TLS brakes can be improved though - with work, which is what you are doing. Lovely looking bike mate.