Mechanical Keyboard Blog
メカニカルキーボードのブログ

• My Collection
• WTB

• 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  OTD 356.2

  Switches: MX Clear, 62g gold spring, clear switch top, stickered, switches lubed with GH Thick Mix and springs with Krytox 104 Oil. MX Tactile Gray on Spacebar.

  This board features a poly-carbonate half-plate which to my understanding is designed to replicate the feeling of a PCB mounted board, which are said to feel better with MX Brown and Clears. The poly plate also provides some of the stability that plate mount provides for the modifier keys. Either way, the Clears feel really awesome on this board! Admittedly it’s my first time typing on modded clears on a ‘PCB mounted’ board. Enjoying it very much.

  The 'Hyper-Silver’ color anodizing is absolutely stunning and far beyond what my skills with a camera are able to capture properly unfortunately. Definitely the nicest anodizing I have seen to date.

  I’m quite torn between using the GMK Dolch and the beige Cherry set. The Dolch goes pretty nicely with the board, but you can’t go wrong with the classic Cherry! For now I am using the Cherry set, it provides an excellent contrast to the case color.

  This board was built by the skillful Margo - many thanks to him for making it possible!

• 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Duck Viper

  Switches: MX Linear Gray, 62g gold spring, clear switch top, stickered, switches lubed with GH Thin Mix and springs with Krytox 104 Oil.

  Got my Duck Viper built by the awesome Margo from CTRL[ALT]. Special thanks to Billnye for helping source the Cherry doubleshots for this board. The board has been tuned very nicely, it feels great to type on and is so quiet! I have mapped the board akin to the HHKB, as in the diamond arrow cluster and caps changed to ctrl. This one is definitely going to be in my daily rotation for quite some time!

  All pictures apart from first 4 courtesy of Margo Baggins.

• 

  

  

  

  

  

  OTD 356 Mini V2

  Switches: MX Vintage Black from Cherry G80-3000 HAV. 62g spring, sticker and lube. MX Linear Grey on spacebar and MX Lock on FN.

  Here are some shots of my 356 Mini. I wasn’t initially sure on the Bro Gamer set on the WASD, but it’s growing on me! This V1 and gamer set are made of plastic mixed with a metal, so they feel slightly heavier than a regular plastic Bro, very cool. I believe it is called the Heavy Metal V1! I have some clear vinyl wrap cut to size that I stick over the brass plate on the bottom of the board, as oxidization occurs very quickly if left exposed.

• 

  

  

  

  

  LZ MX-Mini SE #8

  Switches: MX Clear, 65g Spring, sticker and lube. 

  Here’s some pictures of my LZ MX-Mini. I love the angle on the case of this board, it feels great to type on. The board is also very heavy, definitely the heaviest keyboard I have personally come across. Regarding 65g springs with MX Clears; they feel very solid but I definitely prefer 62g. Thanks to the easy switch top removal on this board I could easily switch them out to some 62g springs at some point, but for now I’m keeping the 65g for some typing variety!

• 

  

  

  

  

  GON NerD TKL w/ GON Acrylic housing

  Switches: ‘Korean Ergo Clears’ - MX Clear, 62g springs, sticker and lube. Space bar Chinese linear red Switch.
  
  Here’s some shots of my newly acquired GON NerD TKL in a lovely frosty GON acrylic housing. I haven’t played around too much with the huge amount of stuff you can do with GON’s new PCB, the NerD, but the GUI is really nice and modifying things like how the LED’s behave, mapping keys and creating macros to store on the board is very nice.

  The LED’s look awesome on this thing. The blue LED’s are on the F-row keys and on the arrow keys and all the keys above the arrow cluster. I have them currently set to light up slowly whilst typing, so they are lit up while I am typing and fade out to nothing when I am not, with the purple in-case LED’s always on. The last picture shows only the purple and the second to last shows the blue keys as well. I suck at taking photos, the purple looks a lot more 'consistent’ through the board in person.

  The 62g Clears feel so nice in the acrylic case. I was quite surprised at how different they feel compared to my other boards with the same switch. I really, really enjoy typing on this thing. The space bar has a Chinese red linear switch in it, which feels really nice! I was excited to try out a Chinese MX copy as I have never done so before, this linear switch feels really buttery smooth and whilst I do have a lubed and stickered 62g clear ready to take it’s place, I’m really enjoying it and don’t think I’ll change it out. I enjoy testing different space bar switches on boards, on my other GON with 62g clears, I have the white switch which feels really nice, but I actually really like this linear switch space bar with ergo clears it turns out.

• 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  HHKB Lubing and Silencing

  Pictured;
  1 - Pro JP
  2 - Pro 2 Type-S
  3 - Type-S opened up
  4 - Pro JP PCB
  5 - Pro JP upper case with stems removed
  6 - Tools used for JP mod
  7 - Finished up boards

  Whilst I do love typing on some Cherry goodness from time to time, Topre is definitely my favorite. I got my RF 55g to feed my hunger for wanting to try out as many different variants of Topre as I can and I guess I got my Type-S for the same reason. Even though I love that thock of the stock HHKB, I wanted to try the Type-S and see how I liked typing on it. The 55g RF is awesome and I now use it as my board at work, but I can say that I prefer 45g HHKB over the 55g overall. Since extensively using my Type-S, I have got quite interested in different lubing and silencing techniques available to hopefully find out which is my favourite(s). I think it’s definitely a misconception that the Type-S, or silenced Topre in general, feel the exact same as non silenced Topre boards - The difference in typing feel of these different silencing methods were what interest me slightly more than the sound change itself, although I do love the sound of some silenced Topre as well!

  Here is a link to a tutorial of sorts for opening up your HHKB for doing some work to it. Specifically this talks about lubing my Type-S, but of course can be used for a guide to open up an HHKB for any modding - http://imgur.com/a/b8Zw7

  The first thing was lubing my Type-S. I did update my post about my feelings on the Type-S regarding this lubing, which you can read if you want. Some things will be repeated here though. I was hoping that this would correct the ‘whistling issue’ that is quite common amongst more recently manufactured Type-S boards. Also I had heard a video of someone typing on a lubed Type-S and it was very silent and sounded awesome so I wanted to give it a try. I thought that I may enjoy the slightly less tactile smoother lubed feel as well. I lubed the board’s slider rails as recommended by Bro Caps on GH. I used Krytox GPL206/VPF1506 Mix which can be purchased premixed as the 'Thick Formula’ GeekHack lube by mkawa. This lube is still available for purchase at the time of writing from techkeys.us. There is I’m sure a debate on the best lube to use, but I believe this does the job and works very well. The slider rails/housing are the two small notches on the case where the Topre plungers slide into (if that makes sense). After lubing the board all up and putting it back together, I didn’t personally find it changed much in terms of sound or typing feel. Maybe it made things feel a little smoother, but overall I was slightly disappointed with this.

  I later opened up the Type-S all over again, re-lubed the slider rails, but this time lubed the plunger tubes themselves too. This method after doing some research seemed to be less popular than just lubing the slider rails, but I found it to be much more effective. This used pretty much a whole tube of the GH lube both re-lubing the slider rails and lubing all of the stems. After trying this out it was a much more noticeable change. It’s worth noting to anyone thinking about doing this, that lubing does take away from some of the tactility and snappiness of stock Topre, but this is to be expected and a preference in terms of if it feels better or worse. The board was much quieter than before with the plungers lubed and it has in fact almost completely cured the whistling issue. I can’t hear the whistling at all whilst typing on the board anymore which is great, but 2-3 of the keys that were the biggest offenders before when just pressing them alone I can still hear it, but obviously much quieter than before. Definitely recommend this is you are having the whistling issue with a new Type-S.

  So that’s just lubing out of the way. I haven’t yet tried just lubing a regular non silenced HHKB, as I want to keep my third HHKB stock thock, at least for the time being. The next thing I was interested in was the alternative silencing techniques - namely dental bands and ironed soft landing pads. The other options that I know of include o-rings, which I feel would definitely be too big of a reduction in travel distance, so that immediately rules those out as a waste of time in my opinion and haven’t actually found information of anyone who has done this to a Topre board because of this. Also I have heard people talk about punching their own pads out of rubber or silicone sheets, but I feel the soft landing pads ironed down are a better option for this from a convenience standpoint at least. I would like to hear from anyone who has punched their own silencing pads out, but right now honestly I can’t be bothered going through all that effort to try something that potentially I may not like.

  After doing some reading of peoples opinion on the dental band mod I have concluded that it isn’t for me. There are mixed opinions on if the reduction in travel distance is noticeable or not. Also a mixed opinion on how much silencing it provides compared to the Type-S. The general consensus seems to be that there is a slight noticeable reduction in travel and the board is a little louder or about the same as the Type-S. Someone also had mentioned that they believed that after removing dental bands from an HHKB, that a stock HHKB lubed is as quiet as an HHKB with dental bands and lube, so they felt the only thing the bands did to the board was make the travel distance reduced, thus proving them to be useless, unless you like a slight travel distance reduction I suppose. I don’t know as I haven’t tried them personally, but I feel from taking a somewhat informed decision after reading a lot of opinions around online, that the Type-S is the best way to go between the two for sure; no reduced travel distance due to the increased slider height and arguably slightly quieter, or at the very least as quiet. That’s not factoring in a potential 'whistle’ issue with the board though, but some lube sorts that out as already mentioned. This isn’t to say that the o-rings aren’t a good mod for some people though - it by far seems to be the most popular 'home silencing’ mod for Topre boards, many people enjoy this a lot, but I can only see myself trying it on a non-HHKB Topre board due to the Type-S existing. I have thought about getting some to throw onto my 87u.

  So that leaves the final viable option to me, which was the soft landing pads from EliteKeyboards. You have to iron them down a lot since they are quite thick when you get them. I decided to open up my JP and lube the slider rails and plungers, add some extra grease to the stabs and throw in some of these ironed soft landing pads. After spending 2 hours doing all of this and testing the board, I found that I had seriously underestimated how much you need to iron the pads. The travel distance was severely reduced and they were pretty hard to type on. I tried playing some games with the board like this and it was actually really awesome! For games I usually use 55/62g Blacks that require fast repeated presses of single keys - Dota 2, SC2, Osu, CS:GO, the board actually felt great. They were so nice to rapidly press single keys at a time, but for typing it was pretty ridiculous. So when I next had time, I took the board all apart once again and repeated the process and put in much, much more ironed soft landing pads; I literally steam ironed them until they were paper thin.

  After re-doing this with the much thinner pads the travel reduction is definitely still noticeable, I don’t mind it personally, It doesn’t hurt my typing, but you can notice it which may be an issue to some people. The soft landing pads+lube is by far the quietest mod I have tried, the board is literally silent. So if you are looking for silence, this is the way to go without a doubt. It’s just so quiet! I already mentioned about silencing and lubing taking away some of the tactility and thock of Topre, this mod definitely feels the most linear, the tactility is still there, but it’s much less pronounced thanks to the lube and the reduced travel distance and the pads themselves dampening some of it. I really like the way it feels to type on. The board feels very light to type on. If you aren’t a very accurate typist you may make a lot of mistakes with this mod I feel.

  In conclusion, I’m far from finished sampling different Topre mods - I’d still like to try lubing a stock HHKB and see how I like that compared to everything else I have tried thus far, which I may do to my remaining HHKB that hasn’t been modded, or maybe I’ll remove the soft landing pads from my JP, but for the time being I’m quite enjoying those. In terms of what I like the best, I’m not entirely sure. I haven’t typed on my stock HHKB at all for quite some time and have been typing a great deal on my lubed Type-S which feels really great. The soft landing pad mod for silence is definitely the best, if the reduced travel distance doesn’t bother you. I really do like the soft landing pad+lube on my JP, It makes me type a lot lighter like 65g Clears do - as someone who usually smashes keys into the backplate of boards. After doing all of this I still definitely do love the feel and sound of the stock HHKB. I think that if I had to choose I’d just go with that, as having a quiet board isn’t really a necessity to me at all and the tactility and thock of that is unmatched compared to any lubed and silenced board in my opinon, although if you want super tactility and thock you can’t beat the 55g RF! Although it really is impressive just how quiet my JP is now and is quite satisfying to type on with it and that’s not to say that lubed+silenced boards with the loss of some tactility and thock is a bad thing, it’s just a different typing feel and down to personal opinion. I’ll be mixing it up a bit for a lot longer until I am able to give a definite answer!

• 

  

  Realforce 87u 55g

  Recently, I finally got an 87u 55g. I haven’t typed on anything else since I got it just over a week ago. I was worried that being generally a fan of lighter switches, that I’d find the 55g a little to heavy, or at the least get a little fatigued after typing on it for long periods of time. This is definitely not the case. It just feels so good! It feels somewhat ‘sturdier’ than the 45g HHKB. It’s extremely satisfying to type on.

  My dream 87u was blank white alpha’s with cherry blossom pink mods, but I can’t quite bring myself to remove the mods from my Type-S at this moment in time, so currently going for the Storm Trooper vibe with some added aqua.

  I am interested with how a 55g HHKB feels compared to this, seeing as this uses a steel plate. Also in regard to modifications, I am thinking about dental banding the 87u and seeing how I like that, as I am soon going to be modding an HHKB with ironed soft-landing pads and seeing how that turns out, so it would be nice to dental band the RF possibly.

  After switching back to my Type-S after typing on this exclusively for over a week and as I said, thoroughly enjoyed it - I can say that I do prefer 45g over this. The 55g definitely feels awesome and is really fun to type on but if I had to choose one to stick with, it would be the 45g. Not really surprising though as generally I do prefer lighter switches. I’ll definitely be rotating this keyboard pretty often though! I have also considered taking it to work, where I currently use a Filco with MX Blacks.

• 

  

  

  

  

  GON

  Changed up the caps on my GON boards a little. The 420 CC is a perfect color match for my 38. Also pretty cool in the first close-up picture you can see the texture of the cap is the same as the Round-3 set! I’m still trying to find a Tsangan set for the R3 keycaps for that right shift.

  Also threw the Originative Sanctuary set onto my 87. Matches the red switch stickers nicely and think it looks quite nice with the gold board. Legendary item hunting!

• 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  HHKB Type-S Impressions

  I finally got a Type-S arrive the other day from Japan. Here are my initial impressions compared to my extensive use of the regular HHKB.

  First off, one quirk to the board that I have noticed a few others talk about with the Type-S, especially with more recent boards - is that some of the keys around the center of the board make a ‘whoosh’ sound in varying degrees. There is the whole 'Topre fart’ syndrome, but I don’t believe this is the same thing. I think this is something to do with the keys being 'tighter’ than on the regular HHKB, but this doesn’t fully explain everything.

  I saw someone who had purchased one from EliteKeyboards asking them about it and they replied remarking that they think after a while this will go away once the board gets broken in. Also I sent an email direct to PFU who also said that this is normal with Type-S boards and it will go away after some time. Time will tell I suppose.

  I’m hoping this is the case. It isn’t really changing the feel of the board, but hearing the noise every so often when typing is kind of annoying. I ended up lubing the slider rails with a Krytox GPL206/VPF1506 mix and whilst it has made the board feel a little smoother and quieter sounding, it hasn’t changed the whoosh issue at all. *Update: I have since took the board apart again and lubed the Topre stems with the same lube mix. It has almost completely solved this issue. 2 or 3 keys on the bottom row in the center of the board when pressed on their own still makes the sound but quieter than before, but whilst typing it’s pretty much all gone. Definitely recommend thinking about lubing the slider rails and the stems if you are experiencing this issue.

  The keys are silenced with the addition of rubbery plastic rings under the switches. Unlike silenced mods, the stem height has been slightly increased on the Type-S to result in the same travel distance as the regular HHKB. The rings are extremely thin (a few millimeters) anyway, so personally I think I would be hard pressed to notice the difference if the stems were the same height. The typing feel is often described as near identical to the regular HHKB, but the silencing (and even more so lubing) takes away some of the 'crispness’ of the stock Topre, but that is to be expected. I have to say, I love the sound of the board but I do miss the Topre trademark 'thock’ of the regular HHKB. The keys feel slightly sturdier than the regular HHKB. The typing feel isn’t extremely different than regular HHKB. With the lubed slider rails and stems coupled with the lube, the board is extremely quiet and just feels slightly less snappy and a little more smooth than a regular HHKB. I have yet to lube a regular HHKB board, but I will be doing this soon most probably, It will be interesting to find out how this feels compared to the lubed Type-S.

  I can’t say right now that I prefer the Type-S to the regular HHKB, the reason I didn’t buy a Type-S when I bought my first HHKB was that I had no interest in the fact that the keys were silenced on the Type-S, I just wanted to try out Topre in all it’s glory, which ultimately ended up being my favorite switch. Maybe after typing on it for some more time I’ll end up preferring it, but right now I’m not sure if I do or not. Either way, it’s definitely going to get a whole lot of use!

  I got a set of white hiragana printed keycaps along with the board, which I have no idea where they are going right now but more Topre keycaps can never hurt!

• 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  GON NS 87 and GON NS 38GT

  Switches:
  NS 87: MX Black, 62g Korean springs, sticker and lube. Scroll lock and caps lock MX Clear.
  NS 38GT: Ergo Clears; 62g Korean gold plated springs, sticker and lube. FN and spacebar MX White.
  Keycaps:
  NS 87: BSP thick PBT ‘Classic Beige’, GMK RGBY mods, GMK red ESC, MKC matte black aluminium spacebar. (Final picture: IMSTO hangul legend blue thick PBT and BSP blank RGBY mods).
  NS 38GT: Round 3, RGBY mods.

  Here’s some photos of my GON brothers. I just recently obtained the NS 87 from Digi on GH. The board was assembled by GON. As well as getting my hands on another GON, I was really excited to try MX Black with 62g springs after finding out how much I like the Vintage Black with 55g combo.

  I’ll get into my thoughts in the two switches in question, but first a brief note about the boards themselves. GON’s boards look incredible. I have always loved the 'low profile’ style like this, with the keys exposed. I love this type of board design where the plate is the top of the keyboard kinda thing, it just looks so good to me. The LED’s inside the NS 87’s case have a few different modes including a 'breathing’ mode which goes up 10+ levels as you type on it and fades away when you stop. It looks really good. The LED’s are controlled using the FN layer. On the NS 38, the LED’s inside the case and under the numerics are switched on and off via dip switch.

  I have threw the RGBY mods onto the NS 38, but I am desperately in search of a Tsangan set for the Round 3 keycap set. The keys on the 87 are also temporary, patiently waiting for the Dolch group buy that is currently running. Dolch will look so nice with that gold case.

  Now to get into my feelings on the switches a little. Before getting the 87, It was hard to say in terms of MX switches, which is my favorite; 62g gold Ergo Clear or the 55g Vintage Blacks (both lubed). I like switching between the two but as much as I love the Ergo Clears, I really, really enjoy typing on the blacks. To my surprise, these 62g Blacks don’t feel really noticeably less 'buttery’ than my Vintage Blacks. The 55g vs 62g weight difference is definitely noticeable, but it’s hard to say which I prefer. I find the 55g kinda makes the Blacks feel artificially shorter - to me at least. I think the Vintage Blacks are slightly smoother, but I think maybe the lighter spring also adds to this.

  In regards to Ergo Clear I find the gold 62g to be a perfect combo. Granted I haven’t tried a lighter or heavier spring in Ergo Clears currently, but after getting a feel for the 55g on my KMAC, I wouldn’t think they would feel as great on the clear switch. Also there’s the issue with sticking if you go under 62g on Ergo Clear mods people always talk about. When I have tried Cherry profile keycaps on my Ergo Clears they actually feel like some of the keys almost stick, they feel a little mushy when bottoming out, but with OEM profile caps on the Round 3 set that I’m using, they feel absolutely perfect. I’m not entirely sure if it’s the reduced height that’s the cause, or it is an issue with the LED’s hitting the inside 'reinforcement bars’ on Cherry profile PBT keycaps that doubleshot ABS caps don’t have. I have experienced this problem with other boards with LED’s where they hit that part of the key and change the feel, but this doesn’t seem to feel the same to me, but I can’t be entirely sure.

  The MX White FN and spacebar on the NS 38 feels great. Generally I’m not a fan of clicky switches, but that soft click of the White switch is very satisfying on the spacebar especially and whenever I use the FN layer, which I have programmed with Aikon to be HHKB like, with caps+left ctrl swapped and HHKB style arrow keys. The Clears on the 87’s scroll lock and caps lock is whatever to me really, I don’t see the benefit in it but I don’t really mind either way. I don’t think I’d like an MX White switch on the spacebar on a Black switch board though for whatever reason.