When the BMR1 Nearfield Monitors launched last year, one of the most consistent praises that it received was the quality of sound. BMR1 packed a punch well above their weight, and looked good doing so. BMR1 is still one of the best options for filling a room with such a small footprint of speakers.  Immediately after launching BMR1 we went straight to work to make it even better. The team has been working behind the scenes to address all of the quality of life improvements that customers have been asking for, and we are ready to unveil the fruits of their labor.  Introducing BMR1 V2—same sound, new user experience.  BMR1 V2 retains the sound signature and aesthetics that users loved from the original revision. There are a handful of noteworthy improvements with V2 as compared to the original release.  Notable Refinements of BMR1 V2:  ▪️ Operating Temperature reduced - There were reports of BMR1 running hot while operating; adjustments have been made to reduce the...

It's that time of year again. We're cozying up for winter (at least here in the northern hemisphere); American Thanksgiving is right around the corner. And that means deals galore. We are kicking off our festivities a little early this year—Black Friday deals will run from November 21st through the 2nd of December. There's bound to be something here for everyone, so be sure to check them out! Black Friday Bash Details: ▪️ Bonus Rewards - Spend $250, get $20 in bonus rewards; spend $500, get $50; spend $750, get $100** (total spend throughout the event, does not need to be a single purchase) ▪️ Giveaway - We will be hosting a giveaway this year—sign up on the main Bash landing page. ▪️ Main Bash landing page Black Friday Coupon Breakdown: In addition to reduced prices, we've also cooked up some coupons for added savings this year! Nov 21st - 22nd ▪️ DCX20 - Save an extra $20 on any DCX Base Kit ▪️ DESKBTGO - Buy two desk mats, get a third one free Nov 23rd - 24th ▪️...

Launched earlier this year in a limited-edition run, the OAE1 Signature is our first pair of over-ear headphones made by the legendary Axel Grell.   Now, we’re bringing the OAE to a broader audience—with a few small but important changes. The most noticeable change is the subdued black finish. Complementing that finish, there are now large Left and Right indicators on the dust covers inside the earcups to help with orientation and placement. Beyond the aesthetics, the clamping force of the headband has been reduced from 3.5 N to 3 N (Newton Meters) for a slightly more relaxed fit. Finally, the OAE1 will include a single sided 6.3 mm TRS cable with an indicator stripe to help reduce cable insertion errors. Most important, however, is what’s staying the same: the sound. The tuning is identical with the original OAE1 signature.  The Drop + Grell OAE1 Headphones launch on November 13th, 2024. The initial quantity will be limited as we work to ramp up production. Hit "Request" to be...

Figure 1: Oh yeah, I meant it when I said obscure... There’s no doubt that mechanical keyboard switches have gotten increasingly better in their stock forms over the past half decade of releases. Despite switches now having tighter manufacturing tolerances, smoother factory lubing, and overall higher quality per dollar spent, aftermarket modifications of switches is still one of the most discussed topics by people freshly joining the hobby today. This hyper fixation on switch modding is due in no small part to the glut of keyboard content creators that produced videos, shorts, and all manner of content during the peak of COVID talking about the art and science behind lubing and filming for switches. For a while there, it almost seemed as if you had to have some content about lubing, filming, and/or ‘frankenswitching’ switches if you wanted to cut it as being a true keyboard content creator in the space. However, as people like this have flooded the internet with...

We’re beyond excited to announce our first collaboration with the boutique IEM brand Campfire Audio. It’s a partnership several years in the making—and now, the Drop + Campfire Audio IEMs are just weeks away from launch. This collaboration has been several years in the making. Drop/Massdrop has worked with a number of IEM companies over the years bringing a variety of IEM collaborations to our Audiophile community. Campfire Audio has been in the IEM game for many years now, often setting high marks for their flashy designs and great sounding line of IEMs. Although both teams had been interested in working together for a long time it was only recently that the stars aligned to where we were able to make something happen. The idea for our first product came from Campfire Audio founder Ken Ball, who proposed taking the brand’s limited-run Black Star IEM and revamping it with their never-before-seen bio-film membrane bass driver into a newly tuned, competitively priced IEM...

Figure 1: Zeal's own photo of the first production bags of Zealios switches... I’m guessing that a good number of you reading this article right now clicked on with some sincere degree of confusion from the title. There can’t possibly be any way that ThereminGoat – the guy who has personally tried over 3,000 different switches – is claiming that there won’t ever be another switch like the Zealios, of all things. (I’m sure a few of you are further listing off at least a dozen other medium-heavy tactiles that you can think of that are close enough to Zealios on top of this, too.) While you would be right in calling me out for saying something of the sort about Zealios, the switches, what I’m talking about here is something bigger and more impactful – Project Zealio, a.k.a. the initial groupbuy announcement and ‘Round 1’ release of Zealios switches. I’m here to argue that not only did Project Zealio fundamentally changed the way that the mechanical keyboard community thought...

Making your keyboard work for you! When shopping for a new keyboard you may have heard that you want to have a keyboard that is compatible with QMK, VIA, or VIAL. These are three different programs that allow you to modify the assigned keys on a keyboard. This is one of the major advantages of using a custom mechanical keyboard and one that I feel is criminally underused. Making small adjustments to your layers can allow you to tune your keyboard to your exact specifications. For example, I always swap the position of left control and caps lock. I’ve always felt that caps lock was a waste of such a valuable space. For those of you that read some of my earlier articles, you’ll know that my first mechanical keyboard was a Happy Hacking Keyboard. As you’ll see later on, my personal layouts are heavily inspired by this keyboard, even going so far as to mapping my backspace to the pipe key on nearly every single physical layout, yes including tenkeyless. Today, I hope you can take away...

We're here today to share an interview with our latest collaboration designer, Captain Sterling. You've probably seen him around the community before, having designed a few sets over the years as well as being one of the more prominent social media creators in the space (and, frankly, taking some of the most stunning keyboard photos you'll come across). With that in mind, we are beyond excited to be able to feature an interview with Captain Sterling—thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions and share so much about your own life with us all! We’d love to hear a little bit about yourself and your history - relevant to mech keys or not. Where are you from, what is your “day job”, what are your other hobbies and interests aside from keyboards? I was born and raised in Texas. I’m married and have a lovely, supporting family. I am a full time Product and Wedding Photographer who pursues Content Creation on the side. I also love to play video games, most...

I don’t think this is an article. I’m pretty sure it’s the beginning of a book. The "technology" section of every thrift store is a potential treasure trove. Swap meets, estate sales... they're the same. I honestly enjoy sifting through stacks of typewriters, radios, turntables and dusty old keyboards... hunting for treasure. That's what has led me to ask my friends in the hobby a pair of simple but nuanced questions… what’s your dream thrift store find and what’s your holy grail? It turns out, that for many, that’s the same question. For a lot of people in this hobby, finding the perfect board for you happens at some point, and rather than staring at your collection of boards on the wall, or continuing to buy keyboards until your room looks like Wall-E’s trailer… Instead, mature keyboard hobbyists tend to do a number of things: Sell/trade artisan keycaps Purchase keycap sets Sell or trade rare/nice (and sometimes new) keyboards to keep things fresh Most of us haven’t...

Welcome back to our series on designing custom keymaps! After looking into how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers, and the potential of custom keymaps, last time we took the first real step by examining your options for compiling a corpus. As a recap: The corpus is simply a big chunk of text. We use this collection of textual data, often a single text file, to characterize your typing habits (calculating various language statistics), and feed it directly or indirectly as an input into layout optimization algorithms – to find the optimal keymap for you! Today we’ll expand on this idea by exploring your options if, like me, you prefer a personalized corpus rather than grabbing some general (and mostly irrelevant) data available online. Image 1: Letter frequencies – the most basic use of corpora – in this very post We've seen that a well-crafted, personalized corpus plays a key role in determining the outcome of the optimization process. We've also explored...

Figure 1: This is the keyboard of someone (0range) who clearly knows how to ask proper questions. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been lurking around the channels of a couple of different entry level keyboard forums and I have to admit that the experience is quite bleak. I’m not saying this because of “toxicity” or people being given wrong information, rather I see so many people’s questions going unanswered… and to be honest they’re kind of to blame for it. While I recognize that not everyone coming freshly into the keyboard space enters it with the same level of inquisitiveness that I did when I first joined back in 2017, these questions going unanswered really feel way under-thought or over-thought compared to where I was. On one hand, you get questions like this: What is best gaming keyboard? And on the other hand, you get questions like this: Hi, there everyone! I am just now starting to look into mechanical keyboards as an avid gamer and I need some help in...

In this series we are designing our own custom keymaps, logical layouts, you name it. We’ve laid the groundwork by looking into how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers (SpaceFN), and also the huge potential of alternative layouts and custom keymaps. Today, we take the first step in designing your ultimate keymap by exploring our options for compiling a corpus.  What's a corpus? Essentially, it's just a fancy term for a big chunk of text. In this context it means a usually large collection of textual data used directly or indirectly as an input for our layout optimization algorithms. Often literally a single text file. Why does it matter to you? Because a well-crafted, personalized corpus is crucial for keymap wizards. If you're aiming to design your own custom logical layout, the corpus plays a key role in determining the language statistics that reflect your typing habits, thus the outcome of the optimization. These statistics, which we extract through analysis of...

DCX Bim is launching today, so to help celebrate the occasion we have called upon the creator of Bim to peek out from behind the curtain and share a bit about himself and his design process. Welcome balance, and thank you in advance for taking the time to answer our questions!  With that, let’s take a dive into the mind of balance!  How did you get into mechanical keyboards as a hobby? Was there any particular event that caused you to seek it out, or was it a slow burn over time?  I got into mechanical keyboards through one of my friends as he was really fond of keyboards and 3d design. What caused you to take the next step in the hobby, moving from enjoying keyboards to designing keysets and taking on more of a “making” role?  Actually, I was really interested in designing and 3d modelling and I have discovered people who designed keycaps. While doing this, I fell more in love with the hobby and designs around them, influencing me to make my first ever custom keyboard....

Fear and loathing on a PCB At a recent keyboard meetup I was talking to someone very new to the hobby and they said that they bought a board and were surprised to discover that it was not hotswap. They were really intimidated by the idea of soldering their switches into their keyboard. Turns out, for some people, whipping out a blazing hot metal stick and possibly wrecking your expensive purchase gets them jittery. All kidding aside, for the first year or so in the hobby, I purchased exclusively hotswap keyboards, avoiding soldering for a couple reasons. Firstly, I didn’t want to commit to any one switch. I liked clicky a lot early on (still do if I’m being honest) but I saw that the folks who had been in the hobby for longer moved away from clicky, and I predicted accurately that I too would do the same. Secondly, I was just coming to terms with what it cost to buy and build a keyboard, and soldering seemed like an unnecessary risk. I can trace my initial...

Having just returned from That Windy City Keeb Meet (a long-winded way of saying "The Chicago Meetup"), still recovering from the whirlwind that is a meetup weekend, I wanted to quickly put keeb to talk post (as they say) and share a bit about the event. Drop's vendor table at That Windy City Keeb Meet 2024 First off, if I ran into you at the meetup, it was great to meet you! I had a blast (as always) getting to know and reconnect with keyboard fanatics from all around the country. It never ceases to amaze me how many overlapping and interconnected hobbies we all share—certainly helps keep the conversations interesting as we veer off into retro gaming, photography, music, and anything else that comes up. All eyes on the announcement podium for giveaways 🫡 We were joined at the vendor tables by Sneakbox, Switch Oddities, and Tactile Zine—all run by amazing individuals. I wish I had taken pictures of all of their setups to share here. The only one I have is of...

Over the years of collecting mechanical keyboard switches, I’ve been lucky enough to have encountered dozens upon dozens of rare and unique ones that have stuck in my mind to this day. Prototypes, factory errors, and even a few switches so rare that there is literally zero documentation about them anywhere in the world all fill that personal list from top to bottom. However, I realize that talking about switches so far outside of most people’s reaches, and even sometimes my own grasp, doesn’t make for the most exciting of articles about switches. To this newest generation of keyboard enthusiasts, though, there is one pretty rare MX-style switch which has made its way to the top of everyone’s “must try” lists – Cherry MX Locks. These often undiscussed and even more rarely seen switches are something that few people have seen and even fewer have had the chance to try at a meetup before. However, the list of people who really know how these unique Cherry switches work is even shorter...

We could all use a personal assistant. Why not make that personal assistant a robot with a bright personality? That’s the inspiration behind Bim: a colorful robot-turned-DCX-keycap set, designed by Balance. Because our fingertips could always use another friend, too. Bim will now show you around. Bim welcomed you! Bim is opening Settings... → Settings → General → Kits (Partial) Base Kit Novelties Kit Bim closed kits Bim opened Settings again... → Settings → General → Renders Renders Info: 29 July | Saturday | Board: FROG TKL BY GEONWORKS Info: 26 July | Wednesday | Board: Amano by h40.io Bim closed renders Bim is now exhausted and wants to go to sleep. Bim thanks you for checking the IC. Bim says "See you later for more updates!" Bim Status: OFF

I must have watched this GMMK Pro pre-sale build video from a YouTuber named IO Sam a dozen times before I pulled out my wallet and pre-ordered it. In retrospect, I learned a great deal about building keyboards from Sam’s straightforward, professional delivery. I watched and re-watched sections I didn’t understand, and certain phrases and moments in the video stuck with me in ways where I still think about them. Especially at 23:10, when he compliments the MT3 White on Black keycaps with an actual chef’s kiss, locks eyes with the camera and says “Perfecto.” (I still do that whenever I put MT3 WOB on a board.) In that video, IO Sam introduced me to DROP, when he referenced the MT3 WOB’s and the GMK Kaiju keycaps that he set the Glorious GMMK Pro up with. I was in love with the look and feel of the MT3 profile. (I still am, as you can read in my previous article “In defense of MT3”) As a life-long Godzilla fanatic, I fell head over heals for GMK Kaiju. In the latter parts...

So in my previous write-up, while highlighting the benefits of alternative and custom layouts, I declared without much evidence that QWERTY is not that bad at all, and also that it is in the top 2% of all the possible layouts. Well, like so many times in life: it depends. I did my original research many years ago - the exact value was in fact 1.82% -, but I forgot to mention that this is only valid in a special case: using my personal corpus and ruleset. It makes sense since back in the day I did this to support the design process of my own custom keymaps. Anyway, it was high time to redo my original experiment, dive in this topic a bit deeper, and reveal the logic and method behind my calculations. Spoiler alert: I was wrong! Or was I? ;) QWERTY Everyone knows QWERTY I guess. Christopher Sholes, Remington 2 typewriter, preventing jamming of type bars, path dependence, whatever. I'm not going to cover it here, check this previous write-up of mine if you are interested...

Figure 1: Are these even long pole? I don't know, but they're really serving 'long pole vibes'. Something tells me I should probably be a little more rigorous about them than that though.. Honestly, I’m a tad bit compelled to kick off this article by once again hammering on the meme that everyone newer to the hobby loves to repeat in that “all linears are basically the same”. While my aptly named last article from Drop titled ‘Not All Linears Are The Same!’ likely did a good enough job of dissuading most readers of that age old falsehood, this one may help put it to rest for the remaining few of you who weren’t so convinced. Don’t worry to all of you reading this who don’t care that much for linear switches, either, as the idea of ‘long pole’ switches can also apply to tactiles too! Once an odd design quirk developed to help emphasize sharp, forceful, and pointed bottoming out sensations in BSUN and Tecsee switches back in 2020, ‘long stem poles’ have since morphed into a...