Super awesome discovery I just made [PE Foam, No Stab Wire Cutout]

When performing the PE Foam mod, you don’t have to make a cutout for the entire stabilizer like I’ve seen many do online. Instead, you can just make two cutouts for the stab housings. The foam is thin enough that it fits comfortably under the stab wire without issue. This is awesome for two reasons.

  1. It actually helps get rid of stab ticking. In this video by Luke Mason, he shows that you can really improve ticking by putting a bandaid strip under the wire. This is the exact same thing, and the thickness of most PE foam should be perfect for this application. From what I can tell it actually does a lot for ticking. My spacebar now has no ticking at all, and that’s without even the holee mod. It’s amazing.
  2. Your stabilized keys will get the same treatment as your 1u keys. With all the emphasis on a consistent sound signature for the keys on your keyboard, it seems weird to only mod the 1u keys and not the whole board. I like this approach a lot more than what I’ve seen, it definitely streamlines the process and makes it make more sense to me.

You guys should definitely try it out. Stab tick is the worst.

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Looks like I was right on the money with this. Kbdfans just started selling something that basically is the PE foam mod but pre-laser cut and made of EVA foam. They don’t have a stab wire cutout or anything, just like what I discovered. I wonder if it’ll be thick enough to work for stab wire ticking, since the foam I used came from a microphone box and might not be as thin as 0.5mm like the kbdfans foam.

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Lol, I feel targeted. I’m in that video like 3 times. I guess I give bad advice :frowning:

PE seems like a good solution. What foam are you using? Do you have any photos of your mod?

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NOOOO. I FAILED. I am sad.

oh hey, I did buy some syringes tho.

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Syringes for keyboard use or personal use?

lubing stabilizers, silly! Im a patron of the Weenhut Jr. Too scared to try non-keyboard syringe stuff.

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Using foam that came with my microphone. It’s probably the same as the foam that comes with the GMMK Pro which a lot of people use. I could show you but it’s really just foam on top of the pcb with cutouts for the stab housings, leaving foam under the stab wire.

Holy clickbait post title lol. Any before and after sound test/pictures?

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Don’t worry we still love ya bud! :rofl: Seriously though I am glad people are finding ways to make their stabs sound the way they want without ticking. Although I do not understand what some other people are doing when they lube their stabs in the first place. I’ve been at this hobby for almost 6 years now & never had any issues with just lubing my stabs & refreshing them every so often.

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Got my Noxary 268.2 back from my wife the other day. Haven’t used it since I built it several months ago, but she’s been using it as a daily driver all that time. It had developed a small tick on the right side of the space bar. I used a syringe to add lube (dielectric grease) in the stabilizer hole and some where the bar clips into the stabilizer. Pressed the space bar 10-12 times and now it’s quiet. I suppose the benefit of foam would be that it’s a more permanent solution.

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so wait. bandaid mod is now a thing we should be doing again? for a while consensus was to do it, then for a while not, now we should be doing it again?

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There’s no shoulds here! It’s all preference. I think bandaids make stabbed keys feel mushy. Lube the stabs, throw a long pole stem in the spacebar switch, and call it done.

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What OP is describing is a completely different mod from the OG band aid mod. He is talking about putting them just under the length of the stab wire to shim it up tight against the housings. The OG band aid mod was putting a small square of band aid under the stab housing itself to keep the stab slider from colliding with the PCB. Although that was discredited by Wodan as he proved clipped stabs do not have enough length to reach the PCB without their dampening legs. I’d imagine it probably cushioned the bottom out on stabilized keys some, but at the expense of having a dust magnet under them. That’s why I never messed with the OG mod. This one using PE foam not band aids sounds technically sound to me, seems to not have many if any negative side effects compared to OG, & is easily reversible if need be.

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Ohhhh!! That makes so much more sense to me - thanks for the clarification.

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No problem! :slightly_smiling_face:

I agree. Literally cringed when I saw the shot of your post in the video as non-working solution.

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He absolutely should have blurred names. That was honestly rude.

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Sorry about that. To me this is a super awesome discovery, it might not be to you. And I’m way too lazy to reverse it, film and record it, and rebuild it just for a keebtalk post. The results have been shown by Luke Maison on youtube already and it works pretty much exactly like his bandaid mod. It looks just like what you’d imagine.

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It might be just good keeb karma, but I’ve only experienced ticking with lighter springs. Maybe <= 63.5g. Especially when paired with a shorter keycap profile like Cherry. My presumption is heavier springs are firm enough to prevent excessive movement during the “stab tick test”. Like, the upward spring tension is greater than the downward force exerted when testing for tick.

If heavy isn’t your thing, you could go with some extreme slow or two-stage (long) springs at your usually weight to retain a lighter typing feel. YMMV.

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