What is on your desk today?

Ha, that would be a great book title, the endless quest for the endgame :grin:

2 Likes

Would you guys mind telling me what this ‘endgame’ means?
Total newbie here… :joy:

2 Likes

The ultimate, most satisfying keyboard that fits your preferences perfectly and is beyond compare. It has the ultimate layout, the most beautiful and best quality keycaps, it feels better than any keyboard to type on, it has a matching cable and probably a few other unique and highly sought after qualities. Once you build this keyboard, you can die happy.

It is generally agreed in the community that there is no such thing and even once you reach your endgame, even if you sincerely believe this is your endgame, it won’t be long until something new or awesome comes along and you just have to have it.

For me, it has now become less about finding my endgame, and more about modding my boards to a point that it is a 10/10 mainly in typing experience. out of the 40 or so boards I own, only about 5 or 6 fit into this category. The rest fall into the category of flawed but lovable, (ie, they need hours of keyboard chores to make them great boards) projects that are on hold because it’s going to take more work than my lazy ass is willing to put in right now, or outright failures that need to be sold or thrown in the garbage.

5 Likes

I had 12+ boards at one point too. I reduced them to 4 that fit the 10/10 category.

The keycap sets are increasing in number though…

3 Likes

Damn…that’s actually pretty amazing.
Here’s a question though:
What if I am planning on doing that with everyone of my boards? I literally mean what if I stick to a board until it becomes perfect before I start looking for another board?

Shure, but then there’s switches and keycap profiles. So the best would be to just feel that this is good enough and forget that this stuff exists.

2 Likes

You are just encouraging me by making it sound so forbidden… :heart_eyes:

Isn’t not forbidden, it’s just money draining. :money_with_wings:

It’s all up to you, but u gonna be around 1000€ when your first custum it’s all done (case ~500, caps ~100, switches+lube+film+stabs ~125, tools ~100, shipping ~120, import taxes ~150).

Shure, the next one don’t have to be as expensive, and u might have better self-restraint then me.
I’m also very new to this but have for the past 6months consume alot of information, joined 4GBs and planning on joining 3 more before this year ends, and that’s before I even resived one of them. :upside_down_face:

I may be rambling about it, and definitely gone offtopic in this thread.
But I’m already waist deep in the hole and I’m just trying to inform you a bit.

1 Like

You know… I am much more choosy in most things so I am pretty sure it’s gonna be a while before I buy a board as expensive as the one I did just recently.

@ISOxSwap
Thanks for looking out for me.

And, out of the few better (10/10) kb you have, which is the keyswitch, and keycap profile, you find that best suit your needs?

I wouldn’t say there is one silver bullet. Each of my 10/10s is great for different reasons. They include IBM buckling springs, modified topre boards, mechs with lubed MX style switches and even cheap crap that I modded into glory! I would say the one thing they have in common is all my 10/10s are made of excellent quality materials (with the exception of the rare rags to riches projects, but you really have to know what you’re doing and go in with low expectations. Those ones I’ve just been pleasantly surprised that they’ve turned out as well as they did). Most expensive boards are expensive for a reason, and they get more expensive as you mod them and put better parts on them. For example, my industrial model M from 1985 feels orgasmic to type on compared to my great felling model m from 1991. My realforce with BKE domes feels better than stock domes and almost any keyboard can be improved with proper application of lube or a good set of GMK or MT3 caps (as well as others).

So yeah, no one profile, switch, material etc makes a board, just the right combination of work, time, money and research until you build something you love!

Another example, CNC aluminum case > plastic case right? Well not always. I would never put blue alps into a metal case because it would make the most perfect sounding click sound high pitched and irritating as I leaned recently with my two WASD boards.

That’s part of what makes this hobby so satisfying. It’s not always predictable. What worked on one board may not work in the next which makes it all the more exhilarating when you land on something great! It’s an incredibly fulfilling ‘AHA’ moment. And that’s why we all want to keep trying the next thing when it comes out, to see if it will bring us into the next state of zen like eureka!

4 Likes

Ok, thamks for that info. Let’s play then.

Melgeek MG Ember (Dusk variant, ordered via Massdrop —eh— Drop) arrived¹ a few days ago. So I’ve put it on my key caps and switch bitch, the GMMK TKL Barebone (currently with Halo True switches):

Kinda like the profile, it seems to be somewhere between SA and MT3, with deeper dishes than SA, but not as deep as those from MT3. Possibly also less tall than those two profiles, but not as low as KAT or OSA. The surface feels shiny, but looks more like silk-matt.

(An in case anyone is curious: the USB cable is tailor-made from CandyKeys and the deskmap is this Millenium Falcon deskmat from KPRepublic — unfortunately sold out at the moment.)

Footnote:

  1. It arrived just in a padded envelope and with the product carton packaging being in bad shape as it was pressed against the plastic trays inside it during transport. :unamused: The trays and keycaps were though undamaged. Not sure if this happened, because Drop let the product ship directly from Asia instead of doing a u-turn in the US (which is generally a good thing), but I’m not that happy that the packaging was done so unprofessional.
4 Likes

Mine arrived (as DIY kit), too, but I still need to order more Millmax sockets to make it hotswap…

I see that you replaced all standard-sized keys with a GMK set (WoB I guess). That’s one of the reasons why I’d rather would like to Kodachi than a Shinobi. Unfortunately Tex and CandyKeys didn’t manage to get me one back then, so in the end I ordered a Shinobi instead. :frowning:

I like Tex’s ADA profile, but I still think it doesn’t fit into the Thinkpad design of Tex’s keyboards — it’s rather reminiscent to old IBM keyboards (way before Model M and friends).

Is that a JD40?

I agree, that the Kodachi, would make finding keys easier, but There is something to be stead, for the ascetic of the spacing achieved on the Shinobi and the lack of F12 shenanigans.

I my self, have no real intentions of swapping keycap sets past this point, as I bought the Shinobi, to be a work horse, not a looker. That being said, if a double shot set of keycaps does come out, that will cover the non standard keycaps, I will be picking it up, as I do use those keys on occasion and would like them to remain clearly visible.

1 Like

The legends on the MG Ember set looks really good. Usually I find a lot of quibbles on new sets, but I only found two on Ember. The ampersand over the 2 looks a little small, and the backslash under the question mark looks like its the wrong angle (and both could just be the angle of the photo).

On my picture? There is no ampersand over the two and no backslash under the question mark. :slight_smile:

The issue with the angles also might be because of the rather deep dishes, so the angle of slash or backslash might look different depending if it is in the upper or lower half of the key cap.

1 Like

Today I am typing on “The Imposter.”

Basically I missed out on “The Monarch” group buy many years ago and thanks to Kelvin I now have a clone that accepts Alps and MX switches.

10 Likes

It’s actually an original mech mini

2 Likes