This morning I decided to look a little deeper inside the hub, so I removed the "Jesus clip" and took the top gear module off for inspection. I didn't see any metal bits, worn gears or sticking or misaligned pawls, so I decided to just put it back together (no bearing free play ) and trust that the noise was from something outside the hub. The sprocket was pretty well-worn, as seen in the image below.

Inner gears, clutches, bearings all look good.



More clean and unworn gears.



Inside view of one of the modules.



Old sprocket (top) and new one.