A low-energy (2.3 kJ) plasma focus energized by a single 32-μF capacitor charged at 12 kV with filling gases hydrogen, neon, and argon is investigated as an X-ray source. Experiments are conducted with a copper and an aluminum anode. Specifically, attention is given to tailoring the radiation in different windows, e.g., 1.2–1.3 keV, 1.3–1.5 keV, 2.5–5 keV, and Cu-K_α line radiation. The highest X-ray emission is observed with neon filling and the copper anode in the 1.2–1.3 keV window, which we speculate to be generated due to recombination of hydrogenlike neon ions with a few eV to a few 10s of eV electrons. The wall-plug efficiency of the device is found to be 4%. The other significant emission occurs with hydrogen filling, which exhibits wall-plug efficiency of 1.7% for overall X-ray emission and 0.35% for Cu-K_α line radiation. The emission is dominated by the interaction of electrons in the current sheath with the anode tip. The emission with the aluminum anode and hydrogen filling is up to 10 J, which corresponds to wall-plug efficiency of 0.4%. The X-ray emission with argon filling is less significant.