What Keyboard was your "gateway drug"?

I remember saying “Meh” and pass the Novatouch when it was on sale for 120$ locally.

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Gut-wrenching isn’t it? I remember doing the same thing to a hipro board :weary:

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I’m still trying to forget the fact my dad had a stack of Model M’s for years and recycled them all months before I discovered this hobby. :skull:

The silver lining is I did convert him back over from the floppy foldable dark-side. He daily-drives a cheap Velocifire for its white-ish backlighting, but has a CM Quickfire Storm with blues and an older Leopold with browns set up at stations in his workshop. Those two still impress me with how decent they are - especially considering he got the Leo for $12 at a used electronics store!

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My in-laws swore up an down they had a vintage apple computer somewhere in their attic with an old keyboard. Needless to say I was like - :star_struck: :money_mouth_face: :partying_face: but then after spending literally days tearing their house apart looking for it they went “huh, I guess we got rid of it”

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My first mech board was a team wolf Zhuque with MX Blues. It wasn’t a very nice board, but it was hotswap which helped me dive into the hobby a bit deeper. I eventually went back for a little project and modded it. I ended up installing a breakout board, swapping all the SMD LEDs, and painting it.

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My father still has his original Apple computer that came with the m0110, but he only kept the monitor and the mouse :man_facepalming:

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To be fair the M0110 at first glance looks very alien to compared to a modern board. It doesn’t have most modern functions. Maybe that could be why…don’t know why he only kept the mouse though, I don’t remember that mouse being anything noteworthy.

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my first keyboard was this sucker with Cherry MX Blues - I mostly got it as a fuck you to my office mate who had (although I didn’t know this at the time) a Pok3r w/ Cherry MX blues as well. I wanted him to know what it’s like to have that as an office mate. I also learned that I really like typing on mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t aware of the custom mech hobby/community. I did get a bit of a peak into it from a co-worked who was a custom mech enthusiast, but I scoffed at his price tags and didn’t understand it. I actually look back on that interaction with shame cause I realize he def looked down on me for my board lol.

Even with that I still didn’t get into customs until the pandemic started. I began working at home at a desk right next to my partner. She was having a lot of trouble with how loud my blues were, so I started looking into quieter options. I remembered that my brother was into mechs so i asked him about options and ended up getting a GMMK compact w/gat browns. Pretty soon after that I started playing with other switches and modding and stuff and fell DEEP down the rabbit hole.

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WASD Code TKL with MX Clears :man_shrugging:t2:

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The firs mech I got was a Das 3 with blues, but the one that really got me into the hobby 2 years later was a Noppoo Lolita Spyder. It came with some godawful Kailh browns and I ended up desoldering and re-soldering it so many times I’m not sure the pcb even works anymore. Shortly after getting that one the poker 3 came out and I got the mx clear edition from Massdrop. Been hooked ever since.

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WASD code keyboard with cherry reds and topped with Drop + Matt3o MT3 keycaps. From there anne pro 2 that came with gateron browns and that was almost the end. But COVID happened and since I was just sitting around, I decided that I would dig in a bit further, so I desoldered the browns on the anne pro 2 with nk creams.

From there I’ve just gone deeper and deeper and since discovering this board I realize everyday that I’m still only scratching the surface! I finally gave lubing a shot about three weeks ago and it’s like a different world!

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My gateway was a masterkey S with cherry mx blues. loved the hell out of that thing, until I found out about box jade switches. I found a durgod venus on amazon with those switches and used that for a few months before I realized it wasn’t the clicky sound that I enjoyed, it was the large tactility of the jades that I really enjoyed. So my next board was a drop high profile with zealios 67g. This board was much more to my liking, but a bit too light springwise vs the jades. I then managed to snag a frost nk entry edition and threw some nk blueberries in that one. The tactility was nice and snappy but the 80g springs were a bit too much and were causing hand pains, so they were spring swapped with 74g novelkeys springs. That brings me to current times waiting for my yok trash pandas to come in alongside my gingham kit, which I will be using some halo clear stems to make holy trash pandas from.

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I’m forgetting my Optimus Maximus. But I never knew it was mechanical almost the entire time I owned it lol.

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My friend’s Rosewill RK-9000 with Cherry MX Blues is the first mechanical keyboard that I’ve ever tried. I was still getting into PC building and he showed me his setup and peripherals. He always made it an effort to say that his keyboard was mechanical and it blew my mind when I finally tried it. I bought a corsair k70 with blues, along with my other PC parts.

I knew I was hooked when I tried my friend’s Realforce 87u when I was looking for a new keyboard to purchase.

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I bought a black one of these last year to mod. It’s a pretty decent fairly cheap metal board. Gonna put box China noble yellows in it and mt3s

My dad always had mechanical keyboards growing up and at times would set me up with one as well, though I had no concept of what differentiated them from other keyboards at the time. In college he gifted me a Deck Legend with MX Clears (pic), which I used for some years, still mostly ignorant to what a mechanical keyboard was. Sucked into the RGB craze I eventually asked for a Corsair K70 with MX Reds one year for Christmas and completely hated it. It was scratchy, the switch springs were too light, the stabilizers sounded horrific, some of the LED’s flickered, and I was regularly receiving static shocks from the switch plate/top housing. That lead me to jump down the custom keeb rabbit hole.

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Keychron K2 with Red switches. I was well into the “research” phase of the hobby, watching YouTube videos and reading up on everything I could get my hands on. Made the plunge and got the K2 and immediately took it apart. Desoldered the switches for the stabs and clipped and lubed them and added some foam that came in the packaging to the bottom of the case. Found a small brush with just the right thickness so I could lube the switches with Krytox 205G0 without having to desolder the entire board. I heard this could lead to inconsistent lube on the switches but I haven’t noticed that myself. This was about 6 months ago, now I’ve got an additional two 60% keyboards that I built from “generic” parts, one with Gateron blacks in a plastic case and the other with mauve switches in a low profile aluminium case. Still learning a lot but damn am I hooked. Looking forward to my first TKL some time next year.

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Nice, the first two remind me of what folks on /g/ were using back in 2011/12.

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What made me fall in love with keyboards was the board of the Amiga 2000.
Mine had the Mitsumi KKQ switches.

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Amiga 500 was my first computer, but I was too young to appreciate the hardware design at the time. Had loads of fun with the games and their music though!

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