For me the main reason for building my own keyboard is the fact that off-the-shelf propositions are so hopelessly bad, that it doesn’t make much work to do better. You can have a visible improvement with minimal skill, and that gets even better when your skill improves.
3 Likes
Because it’s an absolute insult to be sitting down at your desk working 10+ hours on a daily basis, and the only tools you have in your disposal is a Dell rubber dome and a crappy HP plastic mouse.
In my opinion, professional environment = professional tools
This applies for the productivity aspect of things. For the hobby part…well, it’s fun.
Also, this is a very fitting statement:
7 Likes
Love the whole write-up. You should republish that on your new site.
For me - it was a safe diversion from all the negativity and stress, especially in COVID. (after crossing the gauntlet of reddit and finding the haven of keebtalk). It’s usefulness or value didn’t matter to me. If it costed $500 or $50 - and it was good and I liked it, both were worth it to me. It was something fun to tinker with and enjoy. Thats I all wanted. Even now, after getting busy again and not having as much time to spend on builds, I still try to keep up and enjoy the brain fodder of switches and cases and more.
6 Likes
The ‘safe diversion’ really resonates for me also - and this community aids that a great deal. When the work from home started I realized I wanted a keyboard for my laptop, and when I started researching that I dove down the rabbit hole. Got a couple basic in-stock boards from Amazon just to try out tactile and linear, and QMK, while I waited on some other orders. Since then, learned how to solder, build some macropads, and now my most-used keyboard is a corne with Boba U4 and Godspeed caps. Working on a Lily58 build, and more keycaps on order…
But back to the why - it’s this hobby that has so many different angles to it - aesthetics, collectibles, building, all the switch types and frankenswitching and so many ways to customize, artisans, etc. I feel like there are so many different aspects that can appeal to different people and satisfy different things for your brain. Add in a community like this, and it feel more like it turns into “why -not- keyboards?”
5 Likes
Photos like this are a big reason I got sucked into the hobby. Also I grew up using Alps-made keyboards, and then at some point wondered why I hated modern keyboards so much.
4 Likes
I completely agree. The keyboard is more than just an input device - it is practically part of your body. Just like talking, I don’t think about it. It is, at this point, natural and engrained within me. It connects you from the physical world to the virtual world, something so precious that why not make it express yourself. Why not make it sound good? Why not make it feel good? Why not enjoy something you use so much? People spend millions on art, and they do it for a good reason: it makes them feel good. A keyboard, to me, is like art; a beauty not everyone understands, but everyone can understand why.
The other thing is that there is no end to this wonderful rabbit hole. There is no so-called endgame, and this is what keeps keyboards interesting. There is no perfect switch for everyone. There is no perfect aesthetic, nor a perfect sound. This creates the wonder that drives many to keep building keyboards. To me, keyboards are great, and amazing to type on, hear, and look at, but the keyboard hobby is more than that; it is a keyboard community, and that is, like you said, why this hobby is so enjoyable. The meetups, the forums, the crazy arguments about how Cherry MX really aren’t that bad. While one could type on a cheap, plasticy mess, if something brings you joy, that is all anyone needs to justify the price, time, or risk. While someone may not agree with how amazing a keyboard is, they can respect it, becuase in the end, it’s all personal preference.
3 Likes
I sit at a computer all day. I might as well use nice peripherals while I suffer. I don’t think its much different from tradesmen collecting and using nice tools, or long haul drivers buying nice trucks; they are important to your work and you want the best and most comfortable tools of your trade.
6 Likes
Why keyboards? The community. Without you fine people taking time out of your busy day to share your build log battle scars and stunning photos with complete strangers, I would have regrettably missed out on what ended up being something very special to me. I can’t distinguish my passion for keyboards from my admiration for the community.
5 Likes
This for me as well! I think I heard a saying once that if you spend a lot of time commenting in traffic, buy a car that you enjoy sitting in. I ended up applying this to keyboards, and that lead me down the rabbit hole.
5 Likes
3 Likes
I’ll do you one better: “who keyboards?”
Seriously though, I’m in the same camp as many of the others, I found myself typing so much every day and when I started to see fancy keyboards I wanted one for myself. Unfortunately, to a certain extent, I’ve over-optimized, getting far deeper than most of my brain thinks is practical. For the longest time I was of the mind that I should only have as many keyboards as I have desks (2). It’s what leads me to purging a good portion of my collection every 6 months or so just to quickly build it back up again.
2 Likes
It’s not one particular thing- yes, I’m on my computer 12 hours+ a day, so a good input device helps. Yes, trying to find the perfect layout and form factor to help make that 12 hours as productive as possible helps. Also the aesthetics of the keyboards is a factor.
But I think the largest factor to me is that it grabs my attention and allows me to focus on something in a zen like way when I’m in the middle of a build, and leaves me with a sense of satisfaction that I built this after I’m done.
1 Like
Why not?
6 Likes
Like most people here, one of the main factors for me was the fact that I use a keyboard so much on a day-to-day basis that it made sense to pursue a better experience. I also enjoy doing small, detail-oriented tasks such as painting/assembling models, so it wasn’t a huge leap to things like modding switches.
The fact that the hobby “outputs” something with practical utility helps a lot as well. Not that hobbies need to have any utility at all, I just personally find it much more satisfying that my time and effort will produce a tool with use-value as opposed to a plastic model or piece of art.
And perhaps this last part will be a strange way to frame the hobby, but one of my not-so-great qualities is that I have a bit of a dilettantish streak. I really love getting into things, not so much staying into them. In a couple different ways keyboards have sort of forced me to maintain interest. Partially because GB timelines are so long but also because I use a keyboard so much day-to-day it can never be that far from my mind. I feel comfortable letting my interest wane at times, knowing that I’ll likely never stop using keyboards entirely and that there will (hopefully) always be an interesting and friendly community to check back in with.
6 Likes
There is so much variation and possibility in the community. I think that is what keeps us going. Many people think “one keyboard is enough”, and it is if your goal is to type, but for people who want a wonderful collection of keyboards that are all different and express different parts of them, I believe multiple keyboards really is justifiable, if that even matters to you.
where do you find such unusual keyboards?
3 Likes
You build them
1 Like
It all started with my corsair breaking. A friend gave me the name of a guy who was a bit more into keebs to help me find a new one. He started me on leopold and soon I did purchase my first leo. Looking into reviews on youtube on the side there was a vid by Taeha. I watched his vids since my Tinitus always has me in need for something on the telly or PC at home (helps drown the sound in my head) and they were super long. Thus began my descend.
From then on I dreamed of a keeboard build and after I build my first I promised myself no more. Didnt really work out eh.
Why: because I like tinkering around with stuff. I love building things and then see them work.
3 Likes
These days there are lots of places to find unusual keyboards. Depending on where you’re located in the world, there are different easily-accessible hubs with competitive deals as well as smaller vendors, branching all the way down to private production runs of super small numbers and costing as much as a used car.
A few great places to start poking around:
-
KBDFans - relatively large selection, ships anywhere, beginner friendly
-
NovelKeys - when it’s in stock, they have a very solid entry board and all kinds of extra goodies
-
MechanicalKeyboards - local to my neck of the concrete woods here in Tennessee, this is a great source for quality prebuilt boards as well as some custom accessories
If you want to see all kinds of fresh stuff, take a look at ghsear.ch - our own @ajoflo coded this up as a visually-pleasing and convenient way to check out group-buys and interest-checks posted to geekhack, another proflific, if less beginner-friendly forum.
3 Likes