Of course, now I’m imagining the sound of a three-clicky-switch-supported spacebar and cackling
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I got Costar stabs at WASD also.
These are the original ones that they sell and they are pretty good.
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You can also find Cherry plate mount stabs but they are less easy to find.
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Agree. The ones sold on wasdkeyboards are much better.
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Honestly I think if stabilizers were just the two pieces on either side without the wire & the housing/slider units had a lightweight spring in them, they’d be infinitely better than now. Basically designed like a switch without contact leaves, but retaining the Cherry stab housing with a closed off bottom to hold the spring & a modified slider to accept the spring. We’d still need to lube these, but I think it would be a huge step forward in quality with them.
That wouldn’t work very well - the wire is what makes the stabs, well, stable. otherwise the keys would twist a lot
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Exactly. I also believe it’s the wire that "stabilize"s. Topre 2u stabs and keycaps don’t even have those structures on the sides because there is a wire inside the housing.
Personally I really like the design of AEK stabs, simple and effective. The only drawback is that spacebars can be tricky to install.
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I think the key might be Costar-style wires bent to the side combined with the housings of Cherry stabilizers. Make a smooth arc cut in the side of the housing for the wire to travel along, and give the stabilizers a full body for good sound? Not sure if I’m conveying my idea properly into words, but oh well. I hope the picture’s clear enough.
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LOL, Bourbon. I’m sorry dudes and dudettes.
This is really kind of interesting, I was just drunk posting, as it is my “weekend” extended by a day for my double-nickle birthday. But you all have some very interesting comments and I appreciate your perspective.
I would like a good, fairly inexpensive Topre to MX mount because I have a Norbauer. My motives are entirely selfish. I prize feel above all else, and sexy sexy pics don’t matter. I want good feels and non-wobbles in a cap profile and colorway I choose.
I want a good GUI for mapping QMK because I’m dumb and I admit it. I’m more about end result and comfort than I am about making a hobby out of building toot-sweet keebs. I was an English Major in the era of mainframes and COBOL. I respect what I don’t know, but I want a board that does what I want and nothing that I don’t. Can anyone make it easier? This is what I was asking for.
And, stabs. The last frontier. We have nice things, and I get that it requires money, effort, and genius, but I’ll send my panties to whomever figures this one out. Not that any one would want them. I’m realistic here. Nobody wants my tighty-whities. There’s a path forward, and it irritates me somewhat that no one seems to give a flying fig. You know what I don’t give a crap about? Innovation in RGB lighting. That’s what.
Anyway, drunk post. I try hard not to do this on KT, but I slipped. This subject was on my mind.
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I don’t see the caps twisting at all if you removed the wire from the equation with Cherry style PCB mount slider/housing that has it’s tolerances tightened so the slider acts more like a switch. It would be 3 stable mounting points, so theoretically it should act roughly the same as they already do. Although now you got me curious… I got work today so I can’t mess it with it now, but tonight or tomorrow (looking like we’ll be rained out tomorrow) I’ll take one of my extra PCBs + spacebar stabs & prototype a quick & dirty version of what I was thinking to see if it’ll work or not.
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My theory is that the wire is very important for the keys not to wiggle, and most importantly on bigger keys like spacebars. It looks obvious by looking at the Costar stabs but I don’t have any clue for Cherry stabs as I don’t have a keyboard with them.
I’m curious to hear what you will discover, keep us in touch 
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The issue is that yes, it’s three stable mounting points… that all move independently. The wire is there for the reason of making sure that they move as one, stable mass. Think if you laid a long piece of wood on top of 3 springs - if you pushed in different places, it would compress different parts of the springs, not all three at once, all of the time.
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exactly this. I’ve messed around with using switches with light springs as stabs… the wire keeps everything “in sync” without it you press on one end and the other end doesn’t move and the end result is no stabilization and a key that doesn’t work
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Yeah the more I hear from you guys & the more I think about it, it wouldn’t work without a wire. Although that gives me a few other ideals now that I’ve started to think about how to make a better stab. The wire is necessary, but I wonder if the placement can be changed & effect the feel positively? Gonna have to mess around & see what I can come with, if anything.
Yeah, I think some type of wire that connects the two side pieces is a requirement. They have to interact somehow.
I always wonder if the current ones can be improved by just changing materials. What if the wire was a plastic instead? Or what if the housing itself was dampened with rubber?
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funny that you say that. I explored the possibility of using a plastic wire. unfortunately none of the plastic i could shape into the appropriate structure was rigid enough. It turns out the wire needs to have quite a bit of rigidity. There may be a plastic rigid enough to work, but then would it offer any benefit over metal?
maybe a better approach would be to coat the stab wires with some sort of thin layer of material…
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Not being the right kind of engineer to say this for certain, I have to imagine that some kind of coating which allows the wire to slide even more smoothly up and down within its cutout combined with some sort of sound-dampening material at the top and bottom of the stab cutout (to prevent any kind of material ping/contact sound) would do wonders for the sound and feel of existing stabilizer designs. I also suspect these would both increase cost by a fairly significant amount.
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I had a lot of fiddling with keyboards and stabs.
At the moment the best stabs in my opinion are topre lubed stabilizers.
Fiddled a lot with Costar/Cherry/GMK, I was unsatisfied especially on the spacebar. That put me off from MX boards, as I cringed when I had a 300€ + 150€ keycaps looking great but with annoying stabs.
For reinvented MX stabilizers I’m imagining something close to topre in design : housing+smooth plastic with low tolerance : http://i.imgur.com/iyJCG5S.jpg
In the center it could just have a hole that goes around the switch housing and does not interfere with it 
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That would never be QUITE as good as OG topre stabs, but it could come close. Manufacturing the stabilizer as one whole piece is also something perhaps worth considering, but it could mess with certain layouts and require redesigned plates, which may not be that big of a price to pay for some good sounding stabilizers.
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One small complaint. I love the HHKB. My coworker uses one, and I am TRYING to find a reason not to buy one. That being said, I just cant get over how cheap the thing feels outside of the actual typing experience. I am paying 200 dollars for some basic injection-molded case, some injection molded rubber, small coil springs, and a PCB. I feel like it would not be difficult at all to slightly increase the overall quality of the board. Yes, I know that Noxary is making their own HHKB case, but I shouldnt have to slaughter 2 keyboards and buy a case just to build one good keyboard.
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