I’m searching for high quality, thick, heavily textured PBT keycaps, ideally WoB. I was hoping that EnjoyPBT had one, but apparently that’s all ABS (oh ha-ha), just like e.g. Domikey’s WoB.
I’m currently rocking a $49 WoB Doubleshot PBT keycap set from Divinikey, which I find to be the best sounding and feeling Cherry set that I own. Unfortunately the legends look really wonky and the typical Cherry icon mods are, in my humble opinion, absurdly ugly.
Does anyone know of a thick and heavily textured, double shot PBT set, that has good legends and ideally text modifiers or is completely blank? I’m primarily looking for WoB or just black.
Thank you very much! Unfortunately that’s not a doubleshot from what I see.
Also the Hiragana sublegends are a bit too much for my taste, at least on a WoB set. The only set where I find Katakana or Hiragana sublegends great is GMK Dualshot R2, because I find it fits the overall theme very well. I’d much rather prefer Katakana/Hiragana legends on a WoB, over Latin legends with either of the sublegends.
Doubleshot PBT is going to be tough to come by but MK has this set. I don’t know much about it but the legends on the mods look to be decently well aligned.
I’ve previously found this set as well, but I feel like this is pretty much the exact same set (plus some colored keycaps) that Divinikey offers for $49 (which I already have). The reason I believe so is the fact that upon inspecting the preview photos of this set I can see that the legends are very much the same issues as the Divinikey set has.
I feel a bit pulled by the leg, considering that this set is more than double the price of the Divinikey set.
There was one promising option of the Monokei WOB (pbt doubleshot) which Alexotos compared against GMK WOB. But it looks like it’s being reworked, per last announcement from Monokei
Another option would be getting one of those Leopold PD (pbt doubleshot) keyboards and harvesting their keycaps. They’re some of the best quality keycaps period, just a shame they aren’t sold on their own.
There’s also Mistel WOB (pbt doubleshot) keycaps which were supposedly created from the same factory as Leopold keycaps. The caveat is that they’re in OEM profile compared to Cherry profile. There might also be an option from AKKO
Thank you for the suggestions! I saw Monokei’s GB and was one of the folks who commented on Reddit how the scratching was definitely not normal for PBT keycaps, since they were initially trying to sell that story. I’m curious to find out whether they actually accomplish to rework the material in a way it won’t scratch that easily or even arrived scratched in first place. If they do manage to fix this, it will be an interesting option indeed.
The Leopold keycaps unfortunately won’t fit my M60 HHKB layout I believe. And the Mistel, yes, it’s OEM and also a quick check on Amazon shows that it also seems to have similar issues like Monokei had, with people reporting scratched keycaps.
Akko does have WoB, unfortunately it’s ASA profile.
It’s interesting how hard it is to find something as white bread as this.
I don’t have experience with either, but check out CannonKeys CXA and (even though they’re in the dog house) Drop’s Artifact series, which has WOB and BOB.
Your best bet for a nice PBT WoB set would be to go with a dye subbed set. Double PBT is still going through it’s growing pains as it’s much tougher to get good quality doubleshots due to the shrinkage of PBT during cooling. If you’re dead set on doubleshot PBT bad legends are just something you’ll have to live with for now. Leopold’s SS2 caps are the only really good ones I know of & unfortunately the do not sell them on their own.
I have a dye-sub PBT set here (PBT Gentleman) and the keys look pretty good, however the texture is barely noticeable and the keys are really thin, making typing sound quite hollow.
Do you happen to know a WoB dye-sub set that’s thick and ideally has some noticeable texture to it?
That texture is… mmmmhh! It’s really a bummer the legends and especially the icons aren’t that great. Would love to have KAT Refined legends (+ text mods) on exactly this set.
These Mistel PBT sets are surprisingly decent for the price; upper-medium quality? I like the look and feel of my set well enough, but the spacebar seemed to cause issues with some of my stabs.
I believe the Mistel sets are either the OEM version or a similar knockoff to Leopold’s stock keycaps. They use the same legends and both are doubleshot PBT. Leopold has always had a good reputation for their keycaps so it’s cool to see these more widely available.
