For those of you who've had a chance to study Falmer armor a bit:

As best as I can tell, the 'effectiveness' rating of a full set of falmer order can be ranked in this order -
1. Hardened
2. Heavy
3. Generic/Vanilla

Also, as best as I can tell, only #3 has a shield option. However, as far as I know, all three are Heavy class.

Assuming all the above is correct, I noticed something very strange:
I was goofing around at the armorer workbench in my Winstad Manor location and decided I would use my 100 level smithing skill (but having ONLY picked Light Armor perks all the way up to Dragon) to enhance a generic falmer helm and a heavy helm.
For some reason, using the same smithing potions and smithing enhancement apparel, I wound up with a generic falmor helm that had a MUCH HIGHER armor rating than the heavy helm.

Is this:
1. A bug?
2. Something to be expected?
3. A result of my being extra stupid and not having treated the respective helms the same in the smithing process?

Please advise, fellow skyrim fans

Thx & Rgds,

ChickenKungFu, the Pai Mei of Poultry