What did you order or think about ordering?

Ha man I just bought some Bluish Whites somewhere else - but no way can I pass up that deal on Honeywell. I threw in the RGB switch display and a stem holder for funs.

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Jumped back on the old-keeb eBay roulette wheel. If THIS is what I think it is, it will be vintage (ish) Cherry Blacks, nifty industrial caps, and someone has already created a Soarer’s remap profile for it. FWIW, seller accepted my offer of $21 before tax and shipping.

EDIT: And sure enough, the listing has already appeared on Shark’s discord and folks are getting accepted offers at $20, though they point out the 7u spacebar has weird spacing on its stabs. Looks like it was for a Siemens chemistry analyzer and is likely 20ish years old.

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Nice find! Yeah it should be DCS caps, but the spacebar & possibly shifts will have very weird non standard sized stabs. That telemarketing board I got is very similar with the cap situation. I really wonder why they went the weird stabilizers sizes though… :thinking:

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I don’t have any DCS, so that will be nice to try at my own pace There are a few shots of the plate and switches floating around, so I’ll peek at the shifts, but this would not be the first vintage board to sport its original spacebar if I did decide to change caps.

Also, it’s literally got a “Meth” keycap. :crazy_face:

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Kinda thinking about the Keycult No.3

I probably won’t preorder b/c I just don’t do that, but I really like the look of it. I’d probably go for black with a red accent or white with either brass or black accent. I wish it was about $100 cheaper, but it is lovely.

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Thanks for posting this here. I put in a $22 offer for one which went through. Looks like they have sold 17 so far.

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Looks like it also has keys for amphetamine, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cocaine ….

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The no.3 looks like it’ll be a decent board. Definitely not my cup of tea, but if you like the style of it I wouldn’t call it an unreasonable buy. I too think it should be about a $100 cheaper, but I’m pretty sure with the way NK & KC have things setup they gotta split whatever profits so I’m thinking that accounts for why the NK x KC stuff has been kinda expensive. A lot of people throwing shade NK’s way over it, but honestly I don’t see why. KeyCult has always been a more expensive brand, none of the prices of the NK boards has been higher than the OG raffled ones, & it’s not like anyone is forcing anybody to buy them.

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I don’t get the hate either. It’s weird to get angry about a KC board being expensive like it’s something new. Meanwhile, NK is still covering the budget/beginner market with TKL Classic bundles that clock in at under $200 for some configurations with keycaps, switches, and stabilizers included or barebones at $89.

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I wonder how much of it is people newer to the hobby. Old group buys for custom boards used to always be extremely expensive.

Im still adjusting to how absurdly affordable high quality boards became in the hobby, so nothing about Keycult pricing is wild to me because they always were that “holy grail” level custom maker.

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Good point, people who only got into the hobby in the last few years have been way more spoiled than us old timers were when we were getting started. Although we did have the benefit of getting a lot of vintage stuff really cheap before people realized vintage mechanical KBs were sought after.

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Seems plausible. I remember sticker shock back in the day.

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Ended up grabbing one of these for myself too. Just couldn’t pass it up for the price! :rofl:

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As someone who is certainly old enough to have been an old-timer in the hobby – and strictly speaking maybe I have been, being the proud owner of a Drevo Calibur with aftermarket Pearl & Pebble keycaps since 2015ish – but who only really got into the hobby 2 and half years ago, it’s been interesting to see how most of the things I want to see and try were hot topics of discussion for some years before I was paying attention. Even down to my personal DIY projects: the board in my profile pic looks a LOT like Matt3o’s Brown Fox build from 2013, despite my not specifically trying to copy it; It’s just that’s where the hobby had been, and so someone trying to build something themselves will find the tools waiting to do that kind of thing. Same with a lot of the vintage boards I “find.” I can usually find a GH or DT post about the same or a very similar board.

I will say that increased accessibility to customizable boards at the low end (though that’s blown up so much more even since early 2023) is a lot of what brought me in at all, so it’s the reason I’m even here to get sticker shock at the Keycults and Norbauers of the world. :slight_smile:

That said, if someone had a truly curated collection of two or three end games with 4 or five SP and GMK keysets, they probably would have spent less than I have on keyboard junk. Still, they wouldn’t get the obsessive dopamine hit of scouring Amazon returns until finding that one cheap keyset that will fit your new harebrained idea simmering on KLE.

“Meth key,” indeed. :rofl:

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Ordered the 8BitDo TKL, M Edition.

I’m not really into the 90s look, more of a 70s-80s person, but… I think 8BitDo’s take on a C64-inspired keyboard is actually little ugly! Just my opinion. So my plan is to try and make something a little better-looking by combining the M edition with my own keycaps. Playing around in photoshop, I like the look of MT3 WOB combined with vintage C64 alpha keys (I’ve got some on hand). The eras are mismatched, but I think the colors work.

The challenge would be that the C64 caps would need adapters, which would create a large height difference with MT3… do they make MX-to-MX keycap adapters??

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I have some C64 adapters - they do exist and can be 3d-printed (I got them off eBay, I think). But they make the caps very tall - think 1.5x the height of SA row 1, and are quite wobbly.

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I was thinking I could maybe try to solve the increased height problem by putting the MT3 on adapter as well, if that even exists, but the wobbliness you’ve experienced… yeah, that might be a deal breaker. In which case I may end up just making due with full MT3 WOB.

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It’s theoretically possible, but I’m not entirely sure it’s a good idea. The heights and shapes will be quite different up close and definitely in feel. Adapters can only make that worse. The best bet might be scouring eBay and Mechmarket to find a set of MT3 Retro Alphas to go with WOB modifiers. You could similarly look for SA Retro Alphas to go with matching WOB mods. If height is less of a concern than aesthetics and quality, MTNU 800 is a very similar concept, and if you’re feeling really free with the wallet, I think WOB could also be sourced.

At the lower end, I would just about bet somebody’s happy to sell their 8BitDo C64 caps. There’s also “QX SA” which goes under several names. They have a chocolate set that doesn’t go full WOB for the Mods, but the Mods are noticeably darker, and an entire WOB set would only add another $20 if you search around Amazon or AE. The slightly nicer AFSA also does a Chocolate set.

Everything is preference of course, but I would wager that ultimately you’ll find it frustrating to adapt genuine C64 caps, and doubly so to adapt them and combine with a different profile, even if it’s one that’s also tall and with spherical keytop dishes.

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I did not know about MT3 retro, they even have the front legends. Very cool, thanks.

Makes me wonder if 3d printing an adapter that went up into the cap, like around the mounting stem instead made to fit it would help with the height & wobble problems? Although I’d imagine the tolerances would have to be pretty tight for that to work reliably. Since it would have to go up into the cap & not interfere with the switches travel.

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