Oh damn… We’re gonna need a recording of setting that thing down on your desk. haha
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It’s extremely heavy! The name is fitting. Absolutely requires both hands to move.
Yeah, my tactical is heavy enough and setting it down is probably one of my favourite moments in using it now. But that… That thing is a beast.
My favorite part is definitely how soft and smooth the PVD coating is. It feels amazing, my hands just glide on top of it much more easily than anodization.
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Dude, that sounds SO damn satisfying! Like a group of horses walking on a dirt path.
That makes me want to silence the upstroke sound on my build someday. I really only notice the somewhat sharp, clacky sound on my stabilized keys, but I think it’s enough to warrant a future mod.
Have you noticed any negative side effects from silencing? Tactility loss, sticky keys, etc.?
Okay, so there’s 2 main things I’m doing with my Heavy-6 to silence the keys. One is that I’m using hyperspheres for all of my keys to silence the upstroke, but my spacebar gets special treatment because its loud AF.
Even without silencing rings you can get a pretty big sound improvement by picking up some felt pads from the hardware store for $2 (like you might use to silence a cabinet door) and sticking a couple where your spacebar lands, like so:
That, on its own, will make a big difference and makes the bottom-out of the spacebar feel nicer too.
As for downsides, I’ve found that my hyperspheres reduced the tactility of my keystrokes by “one notch”, if you think of the Topre tactility scale as something like this:
45g Topre < 55g Topre < BKE Light < BKE Heavy
I used to use BKE lights but when I got my hyperspheres the tactility was less than what I wanted, so I ended up buying heavies to make up the difference and now it feels great for me. So basically my BKE heavies feel similar to BKE lights unsilenced now and that’s perfect in my books.
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Thank you! The space bar is by far the loudest and most noticeable “clacky” key. I’m going to try the felt pad mod as soon as possible!
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Yeah, absolutely. Once I started making recordings and listening to them it really stood out as being several times louder than any of the other keys and clearly a good target to make the board quieter.
It took me a couple of attempts to find the right thing to quiet the spacebar down but I’m really happy with these felt pads. Easy to apply and remove, cheap as dirt and they take just enough noise off of the spacebar to put it in the same territory as the rest of the keys, so it blends right in. Depending what’s at your hardware store you might have to try a couple things to get the right thickness so it doesn’t affect your spacebar travel too much I guess, but that’s about the only thing that you’d have to pay attention to.
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Can I just mention how super cool of @norbauer it was to include extra screws and feet for the case? It’s the little things that add up!
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I second this. 
It’s a very nice touch. You ship a fine product and you really take care of all the details with grace, @norbauer.
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Received a motorsport case today. Norbauer never fails to amaze me. What a work of art. Can’t wait for a FC660C to arrive in the mail so I can get it all dialed in.
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@norbauer Is it normal for some of the black coating to rub off when waxing the keyboard and using a towel to rub the wax away? I saw some of the towel come away black after I rubbed the Monolith. Wondering if it was residue or actually part of the coat.
Awesome looking board!
What keycaps do you use?
Factory leopold caps from two keyboards. Alphas are from the beige/grey fc660c. Mods are from the white on black fc660c. I originally wanted to get Novatouch sliders to put GMK Monochrome on it but I feel much better sticking with the factory sliders.
I haven’t experienced this myself, but I wouldn’t be concerned unless the actual finish appears to be coming off of the keyboard itself rather than just leaving the towel darker. If it is, of course, please let me know and I’ll talk to the PVD factory, but what your seeing might just be some dust/residue in the wax from the factory where the final wax finish was applied. I have noticed that sometimes even on silver anodized keyboards, for example, if I wipe them down with a towel and IPA, the towel will sometimes come off looking darker, and in that case since no black finish was used it’s clearly not the finish coming off. I have always assumed this is just “factory residue” from the dusty places where these things tend to be machined assembled.
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edit: above question was along the lines of “why mount the plate to the case before adding the PCB to it/assembling fully”
The plate screws into the PCB. I found the easiest way to assemble this was to screw the plate into the case first and make any modifications you want after that, with the plate already mounted solidly on the case.
This confers a variety of benefits - namely, you are much less likely to accidentally move the plate around because it is now one with the heavy 7lb case. Also, bezel of the case gives you a bit more room to “hook” it onto the boxes or platforms on either side, further reducing the room for error (where normally I’ve had the steel plate slip off of the boxes before and ruin all of the work put into assembly).
