Going live Friday on Massdrop!
Hello people of KeebTalk!
I’m sure most of you are aware that I have been working on this project for a while now. Today I am releasing a big update across Reddit, GeekHack and also here.
The group buy is scheduled to launch on Massdrop in August. The exact day is usually decided a week ahead of the drop, so I will update when I have a specific date. But it should be [the end date of SA Green Screen] + [a few days]. If you haven’t already, you can vote for it on Massdrop to be notified when it goes live.
If you want to read up on what has been talked over for 13 pages, you can visit the GeekHack thread. The thread initially mainly revolved around the choice of legends: how the APL legends are placed on the alphas, and my choice of Modifier text-only legends.
I’ve taken in all of the feedback generated so far, and from that created the currently soft-locked revision of kits you can see below. Ever since the last update, which has been quite a while ago now, the following things have changed:
- t0mb3ry assisted me by creating vector work for the unique APL symbols, as well as further fine tuning the hand icons and roman numerals for the Symbols kit. All renders now feature these custom legends.
- I have further optimized the coverage of the base kit, it currently covers WK, WKL, Fullsize, 96key, 1800, CP, 60%, 65%, 75%, HHKB-style, the C70, 60% with arrows, and a few more I can’t think of right now.
- I removed Cadet specific alpha keys from the base kit to cut down cost, and I believe not many people would have ended up making good use of them anyways. I now have standard US-ANSI alphas with two extra pipe keys for physical ISO support.
- I removed Gray keys from the Symbols kit. Instead I increased layout support, such as vertical macro/function rows on VE.A/TC-V3/RedScarf II.
- I removed Community keys from the Symbols kit. There seems to be a lack of interest in these nowadays anyways.
- I added blue spacebars to the Black Modifiers, and renamed the kit to True Cadet.
- I added a Cherry Icon kit for those that dislike the text-only modifiers I chose for the base kit. I did not go for Icon+Text (the ‘standard’ GMK legends used on Carbon/Laser/Nautilus etc) as I felt they didn’t change too much about the look. Instead I went for the style of old Cherry keyboards such as the G80-1800 where the center part uses icons only, while top and bottom row remain text only. GMK Muted is a set that used this style for example, and I have demonstrated this in some of the renders.
- I added blue spacebars to the Blue Alphas kit.
- I removed blue spacebars from the Spacebars and -Keys kit, which is now a Spacekeys kit only.
– The addition of blue spacebars to True Cadet and Blue Alphas now ensures nobody needing them forgets to purchase them, and it cuts the number of kits you need to buy from 3 down to 2, which saves about 15-20$ in a GMK buy in ‘kit split taxes’. - NorDeUK is untouched
- I am introducing the Assembly Kit, which is a kit independent from the Base Kit that fully covers the Ergodox keyboard.
- I am also introducing the 40bit Kit, which is also independent from the Base Kit and covers Planck, Preonic and a variety of 40% keyboards.
– Both these kits have brand new ASM inspired modifier legends. I mocked up a blank modifier version for both, but with the busy Cadet alphas in the center it looked very imbalanced. These kits will not be cheap, probably more expensive than the base kit as they will hit way lower MOQ’s (100 for both would be a big success already) while the base kit will most likely hit 500 units, and hopefully also 1000. So please keep in mind that you are probably going to be paying the price of a kit that is only produced a hundred times, but I think it is very much worth the extra cost for the modifier legends, and I hope many of you agree. I will then also be able to use these legends in GMK Oblivion V2 next year. And again, the base kit is NOT required, all you need is either the Assembly or the 40bit kit for your special layout, and I’ve seen people shell out 180-200$ in previous GMK runs where Ergodox modifiers had to be purchased in addition to the base set. - Colevrak kit will not be offered. It would be 99$ due to even more custom legends, more keys than usual Colevrak kits, and have an MOQ of 100.
Lastly, the excellent outragedpudding has created a packaging design for the GMK trays. The Assembly and 40bit kits will probably also be coming in trays, but this is TBD.
Please enjoy the renders, and let me know if you have any questions or feedback! I already received pricing for all the kits apart from the Assembly and 40bit kits (I had those layouts covered in a bigger single kit, but the price was not viable). While I can not reveal pricing for the other kits at this point, I can however assure you that you will be very pleased with the 1000 unit price point of the Base Kit.
40% and Ergodox renders will follow once I have the pricing for those and am certain these will be offered.
Kit renders:
Packaging preview:
Keyboard renders:
Thank you for your time!
PS: There will be a couple collaborations with other products for the sets, stay tuned.
