MR Anakin Conversion and LED questions

Hey guys,

To make a long story short, I used to own a Ravens Ultrasaber, sold it to help pay for an engagement ring, got married, wife is pregnant, and now I'm on a budget.... Life has never been more expensive, lol (not to mention I'm only 20. Will be 21 in less than a week though :D XD)

I have a 2005 Master Replicas Anakin ROTS saber however (blade stopped working after beating the heck out of it as a kid, but the sound still works!! lol).

My problem is this: Star Wars episode VII is coming out and I plan on going in costume, and I have light saber that doesn't work. Much worse than that, if I got it to work it would be blue..... That proposes a problem, because I fell hard for those cookies..... And then the voices told me to go red.....

Okay now to business.
I know that there are parts here I can buy to convert the saber, and I'm confident that if I were to by them all I could manage to convert it with no issues, but the tutorial on how to do that was made a while ago, and there are new LEDs out there, and there are some that I have read about being sold here that I cannot find in the store.
I'm speaking specifically about the Rebel Deep Red, and these Cree LEDs (newer to the store I presume).

I'm not the most tech savvy guy out there, so when you start talking voltage, currents, wattage, over driven stuff, I'm already lost.
So all I need to know really is, what should I buy, and if its different than what the tutorials are calling for, then is there anything I should do differently? I am willing to do the work to overdrive stuff and make things brighter and what not, I just have a REALLY hard time understanding all that.

My goals would be obvious: As bright as I can get it with my current set up, and as deep red as I can get it.
Currently, after adding it up, if I just went with the tutorials, I would be spending around $50ish. I'm willing to go $100 at the most.

Also, I am thinking about making a custom hilt for the light saber (Sink tube style). Any thoughts on this? The store is out of stock of a few of the items it would take, so I would have to work around that issue.



Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks in advance :)

Do not know much about MR saber conversions myself, but I can help you locate the LEDs you can't seem to find!

Crees

Rebels (Though I do not see the Deep Red in the list which means it is out of stock at the moment)

And the rest I will save for the Conversion Masters to answer.

There's nothing different with the newer LEDs if you're running it straight from the MR board. You likely just broke the strip and you can run it just fine from the board. For your budget there's not much else you can do and the "add-on" boards for running LEDs that used to be around aren't anymore. Simple conversions aren't running the LED properly, but it works. I say keep it simple! Wire it like the tutorial and have fun.