Concerning Lightsabers, Part 1: Kyberlight

About a month ago, I went with my sensei and a couple other students from my dojo to a lightsaber fight in Washington Square Park. I borrowed someone's saber and we did some lightsaber kendo for everyone. It was a good time, and despite my rather rough technique, I managed to win a bout.

Anyway, afterwards I decided to take the plunge and purchase my own dueling lightsaber. I'd been thinking about it for a while and thought, 'why not?'



That then led down the rabbit hole of which brand, hilt design, and lightsaber color to get. I had a hard time choosing, especially as a cosplayer, since I might need a different hilt for different occasions. This brought me to Kyberlight. This company's whole appeal is that they sell a lightsaber with a bunch of interchangeable parts so you can easily create your own custom lightsaber hilt. The blade can also change to whatever color you want with a push of a button.

This seemed like the most bang for my buck. I could get a few hilt designs right of the gate, and if I wanted some more parts to make something new, it was only about $20 extra.

I placed my order for the Master Pack along with a few extra parts I knew I wanted and waited for it to arrive. I was pretty excited when I opened the box. I came with a default hilt configuration, a charger, three hilt sleeves, four emitters, and five pommels, including a dual connector if I wanted to create a double sided saber.

I knew I wouldn't be too crazy about the yellow green and pinkish red sleeves, so I also got a solid silver sleeve, a leather sleeve, and a claw emitter, with a specific design in mind for that one. 

After pulling the blade out and doing the obligatory swinging around and hitting stuff I started playing around with various designs. 

First off, I'm a huge fan of Kevin J. Anderson's Tales of the Jedi from Dark Horse Comics, now part of the Legends Continuity, so my first order of business was to create a hilt that closely matched that general design. 

I'm pretty pleased with the results and I'll be adding to my Ulic Qel Droma cosplay at the earliest opportunity. 

Beyond that, it was just toying around with different combos. 

Now as great as the different parts are, they don't lend themselves to recreating any of saber hilts seen on screen. They're really meant for creating a hilt that's truly your own. 

That said, I started to notice a few flaws as I was toying with this. The screws for keeping the sleeves in place were only at the bottom, which made the top rattle a lot. I might start putting some rubber lining there to help hold them in place. 

Also, for some reason, all the sleeves were just a little bit short of the bottom of the handle, creating an awkward gap in the grip. 

I wish Kyberlight would make the sleeves a couple millimeters longer at the bottom so they would be flush. 

The covertec belt clip annoyed me a lot. It always seemed to be right where I wanted to put my fingers. 

I got a little frustrated with it until I realized it didn't have to be an issue. If I was planning to duel, I could easily remove it since it would be difficult to wear the lightsaber on my belt with the blade in it. And if I just wanted to wear it as a prop, I could remove the blade attach the clip. Crisis averted. 

One extremely positive thing about Kyberlight is the blade tips are interchangeable and replaceable. 

Other companies require customers to commit to a pointed or rounded tip. At the duel last month, a number people had their tips pop off (or as they called it, a circumcision), so it was nice to know that if that happened to me, I could easily get a replacement tip at minimal cost. 

Overall, I'd say Kyberlight has some work to do in perfecting their design and adding more options. Their sleeve selection goes in all the colors of the rainbow, but have little difference in the grip design. As a starter blade for an indecisive buyer, it's not a bad choice. I have another duel coming up in October, so we'll see how I do with it. 

Next, a larger review of hilt designs.