I never thought I’d like low profile boards, but it really is an eye opening niche of the hobby because of its emphasis on things like reduced key layouts. Super glad I took the plunge! It really reinvigorated the joy and fun of the hobby for me.
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Update:
The 18mm Geon springs are indeed useful.
I think they are good for top-bump, slightly long-pole tactiles.
I put a Geon Baby Blue tactile stem in MX Brown and KTT Macaron Orange housings.
With 50 G 18mm Geon springs, it produces light/medium-tactiles.
The Baby Blue/Brown feels stiffer, as if the Brown leaf is pushing more. Baby Blue Macaron [it looks like a Cotton-Candy] is cleaner and feels lighter. The Baby Blue Macaron Orange is super-loud, though, because of the long-pole stem in the resonant and empty-sounding Macaron Orange housing.
However, the Baby Blue stems in any housing seem a little wobbly with the Geon 18mm springs. As others have indicated, these stems probably want a 22mm or greater spring, maybe 2-3 stage.
Above: Geon Baby Blue stem in Macaron Orange, in MX1A Milky Brown.
I also put the 50 G 18mm spring in stock Macaron Orange.
This was a marked improvement, for me. They feel light, stable, and consistent.
Although it likes long springs, I think the Macaron Orange stem is fine with 18mm. So now, I am considering building Geon Macaron Orange switches.
All of these switches with 18mm Geon springs feel kind of what you would expect a P-bump tactile Boba LT to be like.
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It has been a while, huh?
From left to right, top to bottom.
- QVQ Studio Draklet, made by BSUN with POM stem, PC top, PA66 bottom. 3.8mm travel, according to specs, but might as well be 4mm with PBO. Quite a deep sound for being that material combo.
- Six-Six Peripherals “Green and Blue”. No Idea on specs, nothing was listed. But if i had to guess, i’d say PA66 housing with a POM/POK/LY stem. They are made by the same manufacturer that made the Mint BCP, but so far i have no idea who that could be. Researched and found “XingNeng” but that’s about all i know about them. Not related to “Xingmeng” afaik.
- Gin Mint Mambo. The listing said “Manufactured by Xaodi” but it’s just LCET and the molds match some of my other LCET’s 1:1. Well, it was also the reason for me to buy them, since i’ve been a massive LCET fanboy recently. LY stem, PC to, PA66 bottom on these, with decently little wobble and really smooth but on the higher pitch of the spectrum, but still not as high as typical HMX.
- Supposedly some funky switches from someone who has bought some molds and ran a GB with them in china. But they are virtually identical to the old JWICK blacks before they received the JWICK nameplate. So i’m rather confused by that. Either someone has bought the old JWICK molds and ran a private GB with them, or the translation (both with deepl, google translate, chatGPT, grok and copilot.) is just messing with me.
- Sillyworks Sonja. Made by HMX with POM stem and Nylon housing, but with an Idea that made me interested in them. They are supposedly created to have a more “vintage” feel so they are purposefully made to feel just a little scratchy, like unlubed MX blacks and, well, they are. Wobble is good, maybe not as good as some other HMX but still not bad. They have a higher pitched and louder sound and a slight scratchy feel to them.
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A mysterious package arrived today.
Those are my two aquanauts cases 
No time yet to show what’s inside, I’ll probably do that this WE.
But I already have one assembled and I love typing on it 
You’ll soon have more details in the Aquanaut Project KeebTalk project page.
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I can only imagine the mix of both excitement and trepidation when opening this box! So cool. Can’t wait to see them.
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Last week I won a giveaway from Lightning, which was a set of GMK Blue Alert R2 and Dalifu Frank V2 artisan! And so, the package arrived today and I’m very happy.
The other artisans I got were a few months ago but thought I’d include them.
Alpha Keycaps BSOD Devoura, Dalifu BSOD Frank V2, Level Caps Blue Alert Pantera
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Awesome win, Diego is such an awesome dude! Very nice resin too, we don’t have a bunch of artisan collectors here, but the few of there are always appreciate seeing people’s Ws!
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Ended up getting a board I completely forgot I ordered; Nuxros PC Sebas.
I went with the red PC and black PVD weight combo, but also picked up the additional accents to go with either the red or black in both WK and WKL.
The plate is ano’d black, so I may stick with the black accents, but I do love options! 
Also, these came in a while ago. Pantheon must’ve found a batch in a supply closet or something… NOS Nixdorks. 
Just so happens that I have just enough to fill this PCB.
(I mean how fun of a tiny tongue-twister would it be to say “I have Nixdork switches in my Nuxros Sebas!” 
)
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That’s a pretty unique design. I hadn’t ever heard of it. Cool
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Sorry for a link instead of a picture. I inspected and “processed” the set before I thought about this post, and I didn’t think anyone wanted to see a pic of keycaps in a plastic container.
Also, I got this funky looking duster the same day and realized it would be perfect for blowing away all those GMK potato flakes that are so generously sprinkled all over the inside of their boxes (which probably contributed to my hastiness in opening up the set). Worked like a dream. It was so nice putting away a keycap set with no flakes that inevitably will end up all over my desk and in between/ under my caps on the board.
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Don’t we all just love dust and entropy.
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If the amount of dust in my office is an accurate measure it’s entropy, heat death is around the corner.
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Cherry MX Oranges from Milktooth arrived.
Interesting spring indeed and they’re smoother than I expected. I’m going to try using them as-is in a board for while, no lube or nothing. I think my days of extreme switch modding may be over.
UPDATE: Tried a full board of these stock (no lube, spring swap, nor film) and it’s already clear to me that Cherry has their second hit item after New Nixie. A big hit. I like the feel and the sound a lot. And the short but extra bouncy spring adds a lot to the experience. Going straight into my daily rotation.
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Im currently using them stock. I like em!
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I currently have some “new nixies” from the first batch and some “ultraglide” (broken in Hyperglides from RNDKBD) blacks at home. Besides the spring, would the Oranges offer me anything different/better?
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I think they’re smoother than my broken in hyperglides from RNDKB. The ability to use them without lubrication so that they keep their light feel and lively sound is a big bonus for me. Never mind not needing to spend the time to lube them is pretty great.
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I just got in my 80 MX Oranges and installed them into my Klor. I really like the weight and the switch does everything else I like about Cherry linears, so this is a big win! I know the color is irrelevant because it’s covered anyway, but I really like the vibrant orange with the Mictlan keycaps when they are visible.
I also got a few extra pieces of acrylic for my Klor to make it a higher profile. Overall, I’m pretty happy with this, but I’m getting tempted to design my own high profile 3D printed version.
Final things that came in were a few more carbon fiber thumb plates for my KA2s and carbon fiber tops for Totems cases that should be arriving tomorrow.
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Got my replacement keys for KKB Gigachad/Gigachild & some more resin in the past few days! Really have to give Divinikey & KKB a huge shoutout for making my Gigachad/Gigachild kits whole! I ordered these well over a year ago & my Gigachad kit came with 2 mint dolch sets & was totally missing the dark RGB set, then my Gigachild set was missing the white Fn key. I did contact Divinikey about those issues, but at the time they did not have any extras so all the could offer was a full refund so I decided to keep them as is. Fast forward to when I got my KKB Skidata Neo sets in & those had a missing arrow in the Alert kit. I mentioned the issues I had with Gigachad/Gigachild when asking for my Skidata Neo replacement key & they sent me the keys I was missing from them as well! Super awesome customer service from both of them to do this so long after I had purchased. Figured I’d share since we very rarely see any good stories about vendors nowadays.
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Is that a new Shishi or from another community member?? Been searching for info for a while if Keyforge is still around.
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From another community member, unfortunately Keyforge has been inactive for quite some time now AFAIK. Not sure why though. If I happen to find anything out about it I’ll let you know!
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