I own a WASD Code V3. I love it and want to upgrade it. I’m comfortable soldering and all that jazz, but one issue I’m finding is that the keyboard uses these clip-in stabs which attach the the modifier keys with the wire itself.
Does anyone have any suggestions for hacks that could change these to a plate mount style stabs which we’re all familiar with?
You’re kinda SOL there. WASD uses Costar style stabilizers which use a different cutout in the plate than Cherry style plate mount stabs. If the PCB has holes for Cherry PCB mount style stabs you could cut the holes in the plate larger to accommodate them. Although I doubt the PCB has the holes for them. Also I would not try to cut the plate for Cherry style plate mount stabilizers as they need a fairly tight cutout that has a very specific shape.
Costar style, thank you for putting a name here for me to continue researching with.
Yeah, I was beginning to think I might be SOL which lead me to ask online.
Thanks for the information.
Costar stabs are not that bad, well tuned they rival the best Cherry PCB stabilizers.
And you have the real shit on a WASD, that is genuine Costar stabs, not shitty clones.
The only problem with Costar is when you want to change your keycaps, it makes the process a bit more difficult.
Also it does not hurt to buy spare Costar plastic prongs that you plug into your stabilized keys, those can sometimes break when you try to remove them (some are even glued to the keycaps).
You can buy those spare parts at WASD for example.
I just don’t like the limited cap sets but I love the WASD.
I’d a fantastic board!
Yes, those are solid keyboards.
They are made by Costar, who is also the manufacturer of Filcos.
You can still put whatever keycaps you want in it, and maybe even a daughterboard should be available to make it QMK compatible.
Just to clarify, the clips in the bottom of the key caps should come out of the caps. They are just a standard MX keyset, and the costar stabilizers have inserts that fit into the stabilizers stems. You should be able to use any MX compatible keyset. You’re not limited at all!
Funny story the store I bought my kbd75 sent me costar stabs instead of the normal cherry style that should have been with the keeb. Sucked cause I had to get other stabs from another store instead of once more arguing with them (they love sending shit woth the free parcel option instead of the extra option I pay for)
Costar stabs are perfectly ok (you need to play a bit with a wire but they are otherwise not much harder to put keycap on than cherry stabs), until you need to mount ISO enter 
Thankfully I’m not an ISO user 
Nobody should be, tbh. I’ve switched to ANSI layouts not long after getting into this hobby. It’s too much hassle - unavailability of some of the best hotswap PCBs with ISO, availability of keycaps, and now when I’m apparently Topre guy it’s completely different set of availability issues…
But I’ve stuck to ISO long enough to experience this and bloody h… 
Same switched as soon as I got into this hobby and didnt find many sets with Iso and language support and when they had it those extras had whopping price tags