This week has been unequivocally shitty. We made the decision to, and ultimately did, put our cat down on Thursday. Kidney failure takes no prisoners and she was starting to suffer. But that’s not to say it’s been all bad.
I worked out a deal with @chono and am now in possession of this beautiful GoCF Heavy Grail. The sound is exactly what I was hoping for: tighter and richer than the stock case but not a massive departure. The #2 Des rings make the sound a bit more composed than stock without losing the characteristic Topre sound that I love so much.
It’ll unfortunately be a week before I get to spend any meaningful time with it since I’m leaving for a work trip tomorrow but I’m so excited to put it through its paces when I get back.
Sorry to hear about your cat. We had to put our cat down two weeks ago. We still don’t know what happened. They think it was cancer. It was terrible. I feel ya. We have recently adopted a new cat. Hard to get used to a new animal after all these years.
Got my prevail stuff today. I noticed they are pretty much sold out of everything now. My order was Tecsee Oreo switches, SP Star Ayara switches, durock stabilizer space bar wires, and a bunch of Sprit extreme springs.
The Tecsee switches are pretty nice. A bit more wobble than I am used to on West/East, but apparently I can’t feel that as much as North/South when typing. I really like the two-stage spring in these. I am currently using them stock, and I don’t see a need to mod them. Good sound and very smooth.
The SP Star Ayara are nice as well. I like the muted colors a lot. These need a bit of work. I will be lubing them (at least on the top housing) to improve overall sound. I also notice there is a bit of play in the top housing that is easily fixed with switch films. The spring is slightly too light at the top for my taste, so I’ll be swapping them.
All of this would have made me consider just selling them off except they are quite stable with hardly any noticeable wobble and very smooth. That’s a big plus for me and makes it worthwhile to mod the switch.
Speaking of springs… I got the lightest Sprit extreme 5 springs they had left, at 55g. These are very much to my liking. They are similar to the extreme 3 60g springs but with ever so slightly more weight at the top. I usually prefer between 63 and 68g springs and these were just right for me.
JWICK Ginger Milk linears - I’ve been meaning to pick some up, and Prevail still had some when I heard they were closing down. ()
They don’t have as cool a name and aren’t half as rad-looking as Black Lotuses, but Ginger Milks do have the same set of extra rails in the top housing, and are similarly stable.
Crystal switch. Deceived. They wrote that the activation point is 1mm. No. He is like all 2mm. I hoped so.
But he has a good body. Film is not needed. Good move. Can be stock without lubrication. The stock is lubricated only the leaf.
Hmm those switches are interesting, do they have factory lube? and how is their off center press? their description says they have 3.7 travel, do they bottom out on the pole?
I’ve also noticed they have notches on the stems, similar to MX Clear, did you notice any issue with keycaps?
They are so similar in pressure and sound and spring weight to bow wukues. That I just changed the spring of ginger, to spirit 67 slow. So at least two switches))
They do have some factory lube - seems light but they are nice and smooth. If they’re anything like the Semi-silents they resemble, they should be great about off-center presses - I’ll be mounting them in a board for testing tonight and I’ll update this post if that doesn’t bear-out. (Edit: yep, just confirming they retain smoothness with extreme-angle presses.) I believe they do indeed bottom-out on the pole, but thanks to the shroud walls and good tolerance, they don’t have much in the way of bottom-wobble.
I didn’t notice any issues with the Semi-silents in terms of those stem notches, but I’ll add these to the test group for the Geon Trimmer review I’m working on - I’m documenting how a variety of switches affect cheap polycarb cap stems in their stock vs trimmed forms.
Side note , speaking of MX Clears - in my testing so far, the Cherry Ergo Clear has had the most tenacious grip on caps by a wide margin - but has caused noticeably less stress on the stems than early stem-breaker BOX switches.
I hadn’t heard of this one. In my formative year Gentoo was sorta the Arch linux of its day (I was never able to successfully install it on the janky computers I had at the time) and it’s been a while since I heard the word Gentoo.
More of a clever play on words than a Linux keyboard
From the Designer, Abec13:
"The Gentoo is a penguin themed, 65% keyboard that is a clear successor to my previously released board, The Adélie. With The Adelie paying homage to my favorite types of boards, sub 60’s, it excluded the number row. For some, this was a deal breaker and I can’t say that I blame them.
“Gentoo” is the name of a different species of penguin and as the name of this board works two fold: not only is this board the “Gen 2” of its predecessor, the Gentoo penguin, as you can see here, is a slightly larger penguin than the Adélie which I find aptly describes the relation between this board and the last."
Build process was fine except the plate foam was in serious need of cuts. It wasn’t shaped adequately around any of the stabilizers and the space bar section didn’t have any room for a stabilizer bar. Nothing some scissors couldn’t fix. Have to experiment with some different keycaps to find a good match.
There’s this one - a very different approach, but not in a totally separate universe when it comes to form-factor:
More in the realm of “specialized commercial” than “custom”, this keeb originated more from the depths of the Linux community than any sphere of keyboard enthusiasts - and how much one likes this keeb will depend a lot on their priorities.
There’s an old thread here about it that got a little spicy (a pretty rare thing 'round these parts), but from a distance I think it makes for an interesting ponder on different needs, use-cases, and priorities of keyboard buyers, designers, and manufacturers.
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