Clueboard is fantastic. I have 2, one with Zilents and one with Zealios. Of all my boards my Clueboard get the most use by far.
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Hm, they are both programable, right? This is quite important to me.
If I go down whitefox route, I can have whole keyboard for the price of a single Cueboard.
You know, honestly, I have a philosophical problem with the price of those things. $210 for the whole board comes dangerously close to Topre boards, and this can’t be the same thing when it comes to feel and sound. Somebody said at the beginning of this thread that Zilents sound better than Topre, but this is a completely absurd statement and it doesn’t come nowhere near the truth. I’ve just listened them on youtube, they basically sound like my dampened MX Blue. Which is OK, they have their place under the sun. But there is a big difference between John Bon Jovi and Jovano Pavarotti.
I imagined this board as a backup board, when I get into mood that makes me want to taste something more raw and mechanical, because Topre is pretty organic. So, realistically speaking, Whitefox completely assembled shouldn’t cost more that $150.
Oh well…
I was the OP 
I have a Whitefox and comparing it to the Clueboard I think the price difference is justifiable considering the differences in construction. But they’re just totally different keyboards in terms of how they’re built, and the Whitefox is great in its own right, especially considering the low price.
Here’s a review I did on the r1 Clueboard in case you’re interested.
The typing video on this review is pretty bad because it was all stock. Once I lubed everything, including the stabilizers it sounded WAY better. So anyway just ignore the video.
A lot of this is super subjective and I’m just sharing my opinion.
In terms of comparing Zilents to Topres, I stand by what I said. The ones I have (r10 I think) are super quiet, super tactile and super satisfying to type on. I own several Topre boards including one with BKE mediums and after trying Zilents I can say that I prefer Zilents to Topre. But again, this is subjective and I’m not knocking Topre because I think they’re excellent.
I’ll create a video of a Klippe build I did with Zilents in a day or so to show how quiet it is. The only Topre board I have that’s quieter is my HHKB type-s, but it’s pretty close.
Those two boards are made by two of the three companies most tied into open source programmable keyboards. Skullydazed of Clueboard is one of the biggest contributors to QMK, and InputClub, who designed, built, and ran the whitefox are the ones behind the Kiibohd open source firmware. So yes, they are both fully programmable.
Lol, this is pretty funny coming from someone who seems to have just dropped in here to talk about how great topre is, where there are no programmable boards out of the box, and only a couple of boards (what, like two, maybe three?) that can be made programmable with an aftermarket controller swap.
Not 100% sure what you’re saying here, but I think you mean you can get a fully assembled whitefox for the price of just the clueboard “kit” (PCB + case). Sure, different boards are different prices. That’s a thing that happens. InputClub operates at a larger scale than Clueboard, allowing economies of scale to lower their prices. The clueboards that are on sale now have a plate integrated into the top of the case which significantly adds to the cost as that has to be milled out rather than lasered like the whitefox plate. The clueboard case is also made of a lot more material than the whitefox case, there was a lot more raw metal to mill out. That is why it is angled by the case itself rather than with add-on feet. So yes it is more expensive. An HHKB is more expensive than a plum84, too, does that mean no one should buy an HHKB? You just have to decide whether the increased cost is worth it for you, personally. I don’t even own a clueboard because I like the 65% form factor better than the 66%, but it is pretty easy to see why it is more expensive. I’m more surprised that it is as cheap as it is.
Topre isn’t the be-all end-all of keyboards and it seems kind of rude to me to swoop in and compain about how “overpriced” a board is just because it isn’t topre. I can’t stand the bottom out feel of topre but I don’t show up in threads about alternative cases for topre boards just to complain about how expensive they are and how hard it would be to justify when I ould get a fully assembled pok3r for $40.
I’m not sure I have anything to say to this other than “lol”. If you think zilents sound anything like “dampened cherry blues” you either listened to the wrong video or have never heard cherry blues before because they have basically nothing in common.
I still somewhat think you just came in here to troll, but since I can’t downvite here I have to actually respond to make sure that no one else gets confused by your reply.
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Sure! But in a thread about Zilents, which I assumed you were thinking about tossing in a full custom board, you’re looking at $63 for the switches alone, and that’s with group-buy pricing. If you miss out on the GB pricing, then you’re looking at as much as $84 just for the switches.
And that’s before keycaps. If you want to keep it as affordable as possible, you can get a set of blank ABS or PBT caps for $30-40, but a nice GMK set will run you $180-200—you know, nearly the same price as a Topre board. Either way, you’re looking at a minimum of $100 for switches and caps.
You’re absolutely right that going custom is more expensive than buying pretty much any Topre keyboard. But those are mass-market products. Maybe not as mass-market as a Razer Blackwidow or Corsair K70, but still, they manufacture them by the thousands, unlike the much smaller orders that get put in for GBs around these parts. The minimum order quantity for GBs I’ve seen is usually in the 50-200 range, and sometimes even that is too big to get enough people interested.
Economies of scale are improving for the whole custom keyboard community at an astounding rate, frankly. When I first got into serious keyboard modification/customization, back in like 2006-2007, there were no custom cases or PCBs to build your own boards. In just a decade and change, look how far we’ve come! Now you can get a board like the WhiteFox, fully assembled, for roughly the same price as a mass-market item like the HHKB or RealForce 87u. That’s fucking wild. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
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I have the same ones and after lube, nlg, they might be my overall favorite switch that I’ve tried
They are not perfect but all around they are the closest thing to tick all the boxes of what I like in a switch
I built a board with zilents not long ago and was kind of flabbergasted at how swooshy scratchy they were out of the box. Good to know that they improve significantly with lube. Is there a good lubing guide out there that anyone knows of for zilents?
I’m surprised by the number of comments talking about the scratchiness of stock Zilents.
They’re basically one if maybe 2-3 switches I can think of that don’t require lube, I’m super picky about scratchy switches, and lube just about every switch I use for builds with the exception of maybe box navies and clean/NOS Alps.
Maybe I got a batch that were really smooth or maybe I’m just clueless. Regardless, I need to try lubing some Zilents to see what all the hype is about.
Maybe they improved in other rounds, but mine are the first round, and everyone else I know with the first round of zilents also complained about the scratchiness and spring crunch. It wasn’t scratchy enough for that to bother me on it’s own, but it was scratchy enough that I could hear them scratch, which kinda defeats the point of “silent” switches, you know?
I don’t think there is one specific to zilents, but for mine I just did a light coat on the spring, rails and slider on the stem, and the rail slots and slider-well on the housing, all with a small paintbrush. It is basically the same as lubing any other switch tbh, except unlike linears you want to avoid getting any lube on the sliders, as that will reduce tactility.
Oh, also, hi lol. Just make John do them for you, he’s done two boards of them now I think 
Absolutely the aluminum Clueboard, the built in plate makes for a dead silent & super sturdy feeling case. When I say dead silent I mean it too, here’s a sound test of my alum. Clueboard with 78g MX Zilents. It depends on your tastes, but I recommend not using the decorative pack or any spacers if you can get the stabs working properly that way.
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Nice looking Clueboard. Just curious how the decorative pack affects the stabs?
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Thanks! I was referring to the issue that first couple versions of the alum. Clueboard had with stabilizers binding if you did like I did & opt to not use a spacer between the top & bottom housings. The fix was to use either the decorative pack or a spacer they sent out to people who got the kits with the problem. I think it was an issue with the milling of the stab cutouts & I believe it has been fixed in the newest revisions of the kits.
Does anyone here know how they compare to a list silent switches?
Okay so my set of Gateron clear test switches arrived today during my lunch break and I’ve only had time to try out one switch. I have to say, I am really impressed with the ‘light tactility’ that a 35g spring puts in a zilent switch. Coming down from 78g, the 35g spring makes the bump much more apparent! The trade-off though is that the crunch/ping of the spring on bottom out is a tiny bit more apparent in both feel and sound. I might try coat the spring in a thin lube and see if that works. This weekend I’ll try setting up the rest of the board and try it out for a couple of days.
I wish I could try out the 35g in some zealios as well, maybe I’ll get those out sometime soon 
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Glad you at the very least find them interesting! I build my M65 with the 35g zealios about a year ago (had them at the Seattle summer meetup last summer, and this year’s is coming up, so pretty close, but I don’t think many other people have tried modding them that light themselves. I know one other local who made some 35g zilents, but afaik we are the only two. Would love to see more jump on the train!
But yeah, the zilents definitely need some lube (on the stem and the spring) which just becomes much more apparent at lower weights.
Did you just lube the ends of the spring or did you do the bag method to coat all of it?
I paintbrushed it but wasn’t super worried about fully coating every inch of the spring, just kinda lightly coated the outside. The lube on the plunger should take care of the inside of the spring I think.
Ok, I was just putting a thin coat on the bottom and tops of the spring. I’ll take a deeper look into lubing the full spring when I get the chance!
Tbh I didn’t put much thought into doing the springs and focused most of my effort on the stems. Just kinda half-assed the springs and figured I’d go back to hit em some more if needed, but I haven’t had to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯