Board: J-01 designed by @Jae-3soteric
Plate: Fixed ISO layout carbonfiber
Switches: Zeal bottom, SPRIT 63.5g Slow Curve (lubed with 106), Vintage Black Stem, Switch Film, Cherry top, lubed with 205g0
Stabs: GMK Screw-In, lubed with 205g0
Keycaps: GMK WoB with OG Cherry ISO-DE keys and the official The International Kit Logo enter
This might be my new favorite board… of that size 
Finally got a “production model” Budget96 built for myself, only took almost two years since first starting the process 
Maxkeys Dark Purple, cruciformed Box Jades, repaired purple Budget96 PCB, “ugly” black plates, cracked and repaired acrylic layer, and the only stabs are the ones for the spacebar that I had to molest in order to get them into place after forgetting them and soldering almost the entire board without them in place. The board is mostly b-stock parts but doesn’t mean I like it any less, may even like it more.
Honestly I find myself using my “cheaper” well tuned boards much more than any of my higher end stuff. Mostly because, to me, once you get over $200 on a KB it becomes more of a showpiece or collector’s item that I want to baby & protect than use daily. While with a cheaper, well tuned board I have much less of an issue banging away on it all day & become much less worried about babying or protecting it against regular wear & tear.
In fact to accentuate my point I recently got my E6.5, which is the first board I’ve shelled out over $200 for (not including switches, stabs, caps, & other building materials), & still have yet to build it! Usually I would have a kit built within 48 hrs. of me receiving it, with the E6.5 I am in no hurry to get it done. Since I know once I’ve used it enough to get the feel for it, I’ll probably end up putting it on my shelf & it’ll become more of a showpiece than a KB that I use regularly.
That’s pretty much how I am. At one point I got a Lunar m65(from some weird circumstances) that even though I didn’t pay full price for it I was still just too nervous about it to really be ably to enjoy using it. Like I’ve somewhat said before, drop a Budget96 and it’s “oh shoot”, drop something fancy like the m65 and it’s like “fml I’ll never be able to ignore that scratch/scuff/dmg, also it broke my foot”.
There’s a reason why I prefer plastic to aluminum - lighter, easier, doesn’t break my heart when it gets tossed down the stairs.
Do tell.
It’s not literal, but I do have an inquisitive kitten who likes to knock over anything that’s in a stack on my shelf.
This is a hilarious topic, and should be the subject of scientific study. How cat-proof is any particular board? How big must the cat be to knock it off the shelf?
I’d put a Monolith up against a Puma, but am unsure of leopards or lions. It is also worth considering that if a large enough cat takes up residence on top of your board, how do you pick it up if it weighs more than you do?
One possible solution
Science is not moving forward on this hot topic, and that’s sad. Might be a funding issue.
Isn’t that why we want brass weights in our boards? So that cats don’t accidentally knock them off shelves?
Just now, I’ve decided to call this thing the Silver Surfboard; a Massdrop CTRL with Ducky’s Skyline double-shot PBT keyset and some custom switches with Trash Panda housings. All the gray! Even the stems are silver.
I’ll be doing a write-up on these switches at some point; YOK Trash Panda housings with [Outemu’s] Silent Linear stems [available through Gazzew / HBHeroinbob], and lubed with one of Gazzew’s grease lubes - “blend #2”, IIRC.
I went a little nuts with silent switches there for a minute, and after having tried pretty much everything available, I can say these are one of the most actually-silent switches out there. Cherry Silents are practically thunderous in comparison… The dampeners in these [Outemu] stems are a lot softer than other silents, and with the lube, they are whisper-quiet.
How do they feel? Do they have a similar soft-bottom-out feeling when compared to Cherry silents?
They definitely have a softer bottom-out than regular switches as well as Gateron silents (which themselves are surprisingly snappy, but at the cost of some quietness) - and even though the dampener material itself seems softer, I definitely get less of a “mush” impression from the [Outemus] than I get from the Cherry’s. (Of all the silents I have tried, the Cherry ones are my least favorite - props to them for innovating, though.)
I think the reason for this is that where the Cherry silents and a few others have the lower dampeners divided into two or three thinner, tapering “feet”, the [Outemus] have what is essentially just a band of silicone slotted into the sides of the stem, so that bottom “foot” doesn’t collapse as much.
If I’m not too lazy I’ll do some more in-depth comparisons of the stems themselves with testing and photos.
As an aside - while I’d recommend these silent linear stems to just about anyone that wants a quiet keeb (and likes linears), I have a harder time recommending the version of the tactiles that I tried (2.2, I think - he iterates these pretty quickly and they improve with every version). They are pretty quiet, but I think the feel would be more controversial - it reminds me quite a lot of rubber domes, just that they actuate halfway down instead of at bottom-out.
Edit: Here’s a bit more of an in-depth comparison in case you’re curious.
Confused me for a minute calling them Gazzew’s, lol. They’re made by Outemu, gazzew/hbheroinbob is just their western contact/reseller.
Ha thanks - I’ve been wondering about that. I knew they were made by Outemu, but I had the impression that gazzew/hbheroinbob was involved with the design and iteration of the Sky bits. I’ll edit my post(s) for clarity either way since pretty much everybody here is going to be familiar with Outemu.
I think he’s involved with the design for the modern aristotle stems or whatever they’re called now
Yep, the Phoenix stems.
I believe hbheroinbob did have a hand in coming up with the specs for the Outemu Sky switch revisions, but did not come up with the switches themselves. As for the silent Skies he may have had a bigger hand in those & the Phoenix stems are all both him & gazzeW, with Outemu just being the manufacturer. I could be wrong though as I ordered one batch of Skys & tight top housings through hbheroinbob & did not like them as much as HPs or V2/V1 Zealios, so I never got anymore. Plus all the extra work needed retooling the stem guide before you even start to tune them really put me of of them.
Decided to throw my GMK Sky Dolch set on my ACR60 & show them some love. I tried out the R5 keys on my bottom row & they are actually pretty damn comfortable. Unfortunately they look like crap without a R5 spacebar (anyone know if GMK even makes these?) So I went back to a all R4 bottom row.
Something else I’ve been curious about - is “gazzew” another moniker that hbheroinbob uses or is it a different person? (Or maybe the name of his business?)
I originally came across hbheroinbob through a post about silent Sky switches - which in turn I found while specifically looking for Outemu-made silent switches. I was looking for those as a possible route to a less-expensive silent board for a friend - one that could be put-together with one of those Outemu-only hot-swap boards. I eventually abandoned that idea for a different route, but the silent Sky stems had my curiosity.
Once I heard about switch components that you could only get through one guy, and that you’d have to message him directly rather than just order them on a website, I had to snag some… I’m a sucker for things in general that are available in many great or subtle variations - and I definitely have a weakness for “obscure” varieties or versions of things.
That’s also why I couldn’t resist trying to get my hands on a XiKii 
top shell (similar to this one) for one of my Filcos after seeing a photo of one - not so much that it’s a rare thing, but that it would be fairly uncommon on my side of the pond. (And I really wanted an aluminum case for the board that wouldn’t change its typing angle.) Since they were meant for the Chinese market and by default they only shipped to mainland China, I ended up needing a proxy to speak with the seller and arrange shipment. That was a new experience for me, and I got the biggest kick out of it. [Insert compulsory wallet joke here], but this is easily one of my favorite hobbies ever, and I enjoy it every day.
They are different people. I’ve bought some stuff off r/mm from someone who works for or owns gazzeW (he doesn’t go by that name on reddit, or at least didn’t at the time. gazzeW was on the invoice though) & he lives in my state PA, I can’t 100% remember where hbherionbob shipped from, but I think it was on the west coast. I think they are working with each other now & that’s why there is some confusion.
