After receiving my first mechanical keyboard I’ve been eager to mod it by every trick in the book there is. Even it was a much appreciated improvement to my gear so far I’ve learned a lot of things from all those sparkling youtube channels and reddit posts. But there is no book. A thing that was hard to learn for me in the last 14 days.
So off to a start on modding the hell out of my freshly arrived RK84 there were some points that no video and no tutorial prepared me for.
Please point out your first beginner mistakes so that we all will gain more knowledge on the houndreds of edge cases that will encounter in this glorious passion of ours. I hope this encourages and strengthens a lessons learned mentality which has proven always very helpful in all increments of all projects (agile gang rise) I’ve been involved so far.
What I should have read in advance is that band aid the stabilizers means not to dampen the noise that the stabilizers do when you are bottoming out on the key press BUT to increase the hight of the PCB in that particular order so that it pushes the stabs against the board. This counts for the clip in stabilizers of the RK84. I guess for screw in stabs the rattling originating from this in no matter at all.
What I should have read in advance is that if you use band aids that are designed to put bandages to wounds you have to use a lot of layers since those are usually much thinner than the sticking plaster used in band aid tutorials.
What I should read in advance is that RK brown switches are very scratchy duh and that you basically need to overlube them to reduce this scratchiness. However doing so also drastically reduces the tactile resistance which is already very low in these brown switches. Together with the stock keycaps of the white RK84 you will basically be typing on “pieces of classroom chalk”.
What I should read in advance is that Vaseline tends to have good lubing result BUT is hard as hell (at least in europe) and cannot be applied - BY ANY MEANS - as well as the soft lubricants which are promoted by the community.
What I should have read in advance is that good and expensive tools like lubricants, jeweler prongs (stem holders), lubing stations, insulated tweezers, as well as following your favorite tuorials to the point is by far no guarantee that you’ve reach your expected outcome. You can create your personal “one piece” out of a lot of cheap boards but you’ll need to put a lot of work into it. Most of which is due to trial and error since you will definitely won’t find that exact piece of guidance you are searching for in a 5 minute youtube clip.
What I should have read in advance is that if you want to meticulously document every mod you do to a keyboard with your pro cam and different microphones and record even the slightest changes of sound in uncompressed wav format, please go ahead. Otherwise do all the mods in one take since every mod improves your experience just a little. And all together will make the one revealing difference in sound and feel that you crave so much about in all those hundreds of “before and after” videos. There is nothing more enjoyable than taking everthing apart, do hours of modding, putting it all together and than figure that you may also try that fancy tape mod, or putting a layer of foam strips between the pcb and plate, or apply more lube to your switches, or clean the switches and use less lubricant, and so on.