Two ways to build a blade, and the choice between them is the first one worth making: one puts the light in the hilt and is rated to take sustained contact, the other puts it inside the blade and does what a hollow tube cannot. Which is yours depends on what the saber is going to spend its life doing.
Grade is a contact rating carried on the hilt itself: heavy for sustained blade-on-blade, light for controlled contact and display.
Rated for heavy contact. The light engine sits in the hilt and throws up a hollow polycarbonate tube, so the part of the saber that takes the hit has nothing inside it — which is what lets it take sustained blade-on-blade work, and a large part of why it costs less.
Both baselit. What separates them is how many colours and sound fonts the hilt holds. What each core does →
Browse 420 duelling hilts →Rated for light contact. A strip of individually addressable lights runs the length of the blade — that is what buys the brightness and the per-pixel behaviour, a deflection that travels and a clash that lights where the blade was struck, and it is the same strip that sets the limit on how hard it can be struck.
All three drive the blade pixel by pixel. What separates them is how far you can take it — preset banks at one end, editable firmware at the other. What each core does →
Browse 640 display hilts →Baselit puts the light source in the hilt and sends it up a hollow polycarbonate tube. The blade is a simple tube with nothing inside it. There are no electronics in the part of the saber that meets another blade, which is why a baselit blade is made for hard contact, and a fair part of why the same hilt costs less as a baselit build than as a pixel one.
Neopixel moves the light into the blade itself — a strip of individually addressable lights running its full length. Every point on that strip can be driven on its own, and that is what buys the brightness, and the behaviour: a blaster deflection that travels up the blade rather than flashing the whole of it, a clash that lights where the blade was actually struck, an unstable blade that flickers along its length. It is also simply brighter, because the light is not travelling the length of a tube to reach you.
That strip is also the thing the contact rating is about. It sits inside the part of the saber that meets another blade, so a pixel blade is built for controlled contact rather than for sustained blade-on-blade.
Construction explains the grade; the grade explains what you can do with it. Read only that much and you have what this page is for.
If the saber is going to meet another blade regularly — sparring, choreography, a club night every week — buy from the duelling route and buy the heaviest grade you can. If it is going to be photographed, carried at a convention, and swung without being struck, the pixel blade gives you far more to look at for the same money. Plenty of people end up owning one of each, and for a first and second saber that is usually the honest answer.
Within its rating, yes. The LED strip runs inside the blade, which is the part that meets another blade, so a pixel saber is rated for light contact — controlled sparring, choreography, the clash that lands in a routine — rather than sustained blade-on-blade. If the saber is going to a club night every week against other blades, the baselit route is the one built for that and the heavier grade is the one to buy. If it is going to be swung, filmed and struck now and then, the pixel blade holds up and gives you far more to look at while it does. A contact rating is a rating, not a prohibition.
The blade is the biggest single line in the spread. A pixel blade is a length of addressable LEDs and a diffuser; a baselit blade is a polycarbonate tube. The same hilt in the same finish sits at different points on the range depending only on which core and blade are inside it.
Every saber here ships factory-direct, which is how the catalogue can be this wide — hundreds of hilts across every character, every Saber Core and every duelling grade. After you order you get a named single point of contact and a first response inside 24 hours, and a 30-day money-back guarantee if the saber is not what you wanted. Where most factory-direct shops go quiet once the payment clears, we stay.