This is good advice but will be harder for those who solder their boards. Tape mod no problem but the PE ship will have sailed.
I haven’t built a board in a while so I’m weighing these different options, I was pretty happy with the last result but sometimes I can’t help trying something new.
Great video. I agree that PE foam mod should be applied with care to avoid burying original board sound.
BTW, don’t try PE foam mod with half-plate builds. It’s a lot harder to get consistent height let alone sound and feel without the plate.
Slightly unrelated question, I recently got a FR4 half plate for my KBD8x. I have currently have brass with EVA foam between the PCB and plate.
Would you use PCB foam on a half-plate setup? I have it so I figure why not, I can’t think it would effect the flex much. I am just curious cause I have not heard of that many people using foam with half-plate. Not sure if that is true, or just not many people talk about it.
I personally break the tape around LED’s with my fingernails, works good enough for me 
I doubt it would hurt anything to use the plate foam with a half plate, might very slightly make it flex less if anything. Although from what I have heard the 8X really doesn’t have enough room to flex without hitting the PCB off the bottom case. So I would definitely put a piece of paper in the bottom to insulate the back of the PCB from the bottom case. I can’t speak to if not having case foam in a setup like you’re planning will bring back the hollowness of 8Xs or not though.
Yup. I use what you call PCB foam (aka plate padding) if available even with PCB-mount. Its effect may be too subtle or imaginary but I think it cuts down on unwanted noise.
@donpark thanks for your advice! I wanted it for noise, I was just worried about flex.
@Rob27shred, thank you as well! I forgot about that aspect. I have a couple things I could do. Maybe 1mm EVA foam on the bottom, or do a thin silicone pour for custom mat, or I was thinking just loading the bottom case with polyfill. I will have to test it. Good point, great reminder 
No problem! Also the 1mm eva foam might be the ticket seeing how much success everyone have been having with that in between the plate & PCB. Might kill the hollowness of a non case foamed 8X, definitely will insulate the PCB from the case, & leave room for flex! I might have to copy you on this if it all work out LOL! 
Edit: Oh wait that is PE foam that everyone has been using lately. Either way I still think thin EVA foam might be the way.
This keyboard is noise cancelling 
Like when Volvo was marketing the claim that by running their cars it actually made the air cleaner!
I built my Obliterated 75 yesterday. It has Lavender Durock switches (Nylon). After I got it assembled with case foam, I didn’t like the sound. So I decided to try the tape mod. I took recordings of (roughly) the same typing test back to back. Pretty interesting results. To my ears the tape mod sounded the best.
This morning I tried to do some quick science, even though I had not planned to share the experiment. But it turned out too interesting to not share!
I took the hastily recorded memos from my iPhone into Adobe Audition and opened the spectral frequency viewer. Here are the results placed side by side in Photoshop. I labeled the data below. I put a thin white line around the 3k Hz level for better comparison.
My analysis is that the case foam (first chart) seems to even out the frequency in a way that prefers the full range of the spectrum as compared to the stock case (second chart).
Then we have the 3rd chart, the tape mod. It looks even more evened out, frequency-wise. But this mod tends to spread the sound out very smoothly on the mid to lower end.
In terms of science, this is extremely crude. That’s mostly because I had not planned to share the results. However, neither the phone nor the keyboard moved positions. I typed the same phrases, and the tests were done back to back within seconds. I did the tape mod first. Pulled it off and did the stock test. Lastly added the foam back into the case. There is quite a bit of noise contamination from ambient noise, but I’m standing in a large open room with nothing of note changing throughout the experiment other than the modifications.
I suppose it’s possible my iPhone could have done some noise reduction trickery which would make all this data meaningless.
Evened out sounds to me like tape mod is trapping sound. Tape mod also seem to trimming (cleaning?) high frequencies. The chart matches well with my observation of the tape mod effect which is rounded clacks with improved thocks.
I guess the tape won’t let the PCB vibrate as freely, so the lowest and highest frequencies will be dampened a bit because the board won’t resonate as much.
And my personal theory is that some boards become louder because the whole PCB will vibrate instead of just a section once the tape is proplerly stuck to the whole pcb. But I’m not sure why some do and some don’t.
Me either. I’ve tried it on two other boards. Both same mounting as the first one. The tape mod didn’t make them sound any different at all that I could perceive.
Same experience here. I tried out the tape mod on a hotswap PCB with 1 layer, but there wasn’t any difference. I’ve not tried adding more layers, but I wonder if it’s worth the hassle
I feel like there is a part of the tape mod that is lost on hotswap boards because of all the sockets not letting the tape reach the PCB. So, it won’t be as effective, but that’s sitll more of a guess.
But adding more layers should still affect the sound profile, just try to get everything properly stuck.
Good observation, that could likely be the case. Have you had experience with tape modding soldered keyboards? I am planning to desolder my AR87 and lube the MX Blacks, wondering if it’s worth tape modding that board
Its a shame I don’t have a pic of how I apply this mod to hotswaps, ( I also dont own one anymore so I cant take one) but I work from top to bottom, I start at the top edge of the PCB, then tuck it right into the bottom edge of the sockets with a credit card, then firmly up and over the row of sockets, then back down onto the PCB, again, tucked right in at the edges; I get as much tape touching the PCB as possible. This is the most effective way to do a hotswap IMO
Late to the party with this mod but I applied some painters tape to the Thermal of wilba.tech and normally this has a very subtle but even flex when you apply force but with around 2 layers of painters tape, the flex is completely gone. The tape brings out the clack more by emphasizing the mid tones more but also kinda stabilizes the flex and typing feel for a board with very subtle flex, as opposed to a fully flexible board like gaskets, flex cuts, etc. Just wanted to share my experience with this mod!
I’m assuming this is due to reducing the space between the PCB and the bottom case? Are you using a solderable PCB or a hotswap one? Taping a solderable PCB may leave more space to flex. I’m not sure of the total mils of two layers of painter’s tape, but I wonder if a single layer of gaffer’s tape would allow for more flex. Thanks for the documented experimentation!
