The biggest difference between the core styles is neopixel and RGB. RGB cores have an empty blade and the light emits from an LED in the hilt, like a flashlight. Everything is contained within the saber hilt. These are more popular with duelists because the scrolling light feature isn’t required and you can bash the crap out of them with less concern. The light does fade closer to the tip of the blade giving an inconsistent beam. They usually have nine, pre-programmed soundfonts embedded on the board and they cannot be customized. All other cores are neopixel which means they have a string of LED lights inserted into the blade, wrapped in a diffusing material which allows for more accurate scrolling light effects when you turn the saber on and off. It also has better flash on clash – when you hit the saber, it flashes in different spots on the blade. RGBs have flash on clash too, it just emits from the hilt emitter and light spots are not possible in different sections of the blade. There are also stunt cores available which offer RGB in-hilt lighting but no sounds at all.

 

The difference between the neopixel soundboards mostly comes down to user preference and options. They all have scrolling on/off, preset sound fonts, flash on clash, 20+ to 30+ fonts to cycle through. The smooth swing feature is far better than in RGB soundboards as well as the flash on clash, tip drag, blaster deflect, force effect and blade lock up.

 

Proffies are more expensive and harder to customize because all of the settings are programmed onto the board. You need Arduino software and contrary to popular belief, programming language knowledge is not a major requirement. We are doing some extensive playing around with Proffie’s latest OS7 to see what it offers. Latest programming does offer some really neat effects like Sith anger swing where a blue Jedi blade will switch to red swung fast enough. There is a new fire blade effect that looks great as well. The website offers a programmable feature where you can set up your blade colour and style and save it as a file ready to be installed on your Proffie board.

 

The website for Proffie use, functions, updates and customization is here: https://fett263.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/proffieboard-responsive-style-library-os4.html#fett263

 

Golden Harvest boards are slightly less expensive, and slightly easier to customize because the sound files are on an SD card. I have found cycling through features and fonts is a bit cumbersome as it involves a specific button press to get into the edit menu then hilt rotation combination and button press to set the function. All features seem to have to be cycled before returning to the usable state. Things could have changed since my research in which case please update our knowledge base by contacting me for the benefit of our visitors. This board offers one or two button configurations. It is a SaberTech product available here: https://sabertec.net/product/golden-harvest-soundboard/

 

The Xeno and SN boards offer the best bang for the buck. More budget friendly, same options & functions, same settings and folder structure and same sound files. I believe they are different manufacturers, I have not been able to prove otherwise in my research. LGT and TXQ may have been the same company at some point but have since split which would explain the incredibly similarities between the two. This does lead me to think Damien Sabers (DarkWolf) is the manufacturer of both but I cannot find concrete evidence.

 

The limit of fonts you can put onto the SD seems so far to be limited to the size of the SD card itself. Be aware that some motherboards in any electronics can be limited to the card so a 32GB SD card may not be recognized in the board. I have yet to test this theory as I’m thinking about the time required to cycle through 60+ fonts.

 

Both are very easy to customize and both have an app to customize right on your phone. The SN cards do not support i-Phones at this time unfortunately. Neopixel sabers are still duel ready and the blades can take a good hit, folks are just leery about breaking the LED string inside the tube. They are padded on the inside with a light diffusing material and the polycarbonate blades are very sturdy. I have yet to see one break or bend.

 

Please contact me if you have any information that would help provide valuable information on this topic. I can open a blog thread where we can openly share our knowledge for the benefit of all. Thanks so much!