The Three Categories of Prebuilt Keyboard Switches

The Migra TKL Prototype by Thebloodyez “This is my keyboard. There are many like it, but this one is mine.” - William H. Rupertus. In another life, if Major General William H. Rupertus, the Marine who coined the United States Marine Creed, had been a keyboard enthusiast, we might've gotten this line instead. All joking aside, this has been an article that I’ve wanted to write for quite some time. There are many reasons why we love the keyboard hobby, and today, I wanted to introduce you to one of mine—prototype keyboards and helping keyboard designers by joining prototype runs. Now, it’s not risk-free, and one should weigh the pros and cons of joining a prototype run, so I encourage you to pay attention to the disclaimer portion of this article. I know that there are prototype runs for keycaps, switches, and other cool things in our keyboard hobby, but for this article, I’ll be focusing only on keyboards. Also, please know that not every prototype run will be handled...

Figure 1: Nope, not a single one of these is necessarily better than the rest... For no particular reason, I’ve been spending more and more time over the past few months in and around various mechanical keyboard help forums and servers. Despite having never really relied on their services back in my day when I first joined the hobby, I can kind of understand the appeal of them to new and curious enthusiasts as they generally seem like go-to places to connect with people who know a thing or two about keyboards. What I cannot wrap my mind around, however, is the sheer number of times that the exact same comments, questions, or concerns that get raised by the newer hobbyists get repeated. Even with FAQ or pinned set of questions, people seemingly only seem to think about and/or be concerned about the exact same set of things when it comes to their first keyboards. One of these types of questions that I find particularly concerning are those that are directly or indirectly...

Prototype QFRL100 by Thebloodyez with GMK ZX "It's just a keyboard." My Friends, Kate and Jaime’s Expressions After I Explained to Them That There Was Such a Thing as a Keyboard Hobby Many of us have heard this, either stated to us directly by a quizzical individual wondering why on earth we’d find our hobby interesting or as part of someone else’s conversation that we happened to have overheard. While there are certainly less mainstream hobbies than mechanical keyboards, it’s definitely not a common hobby, and it makes sense that those that aren’t in the hobby may not understand “what the point” of having a mechanical keyboard would be. While those same people may still not truly “get it,” even after attempting to explain to them what makes our hobby enjoyable, at least you’ll have introduced them to the hobby, and sometimes a glimmer of curiosity is all that it takes before they start their journey to become a keyboard enthusiast! Especially since it’s the...

A gimmicky hype word, or purposeful implementation, gasket mounting has definitely changed the keyboard landscape. When looking for a new mechanical keyboard, one of the hot terms that come to mind is “gasket mounted”. It’s heavily advertised in the keyboard hobby, but what does it exactly mean? Why is it a buzz term, what are it’s benefits, and does it have any drawbacks? Today we do a deep dive in the world of gasket mount keyboards and what the buzz is all about. Many have seen the keyboard mounting style infographic arranged by Thomas Baart. It’s a great resource, but isn’t quite reflective of the current market. If I had better technical drawing skills, I might attempt a new one. As you can see in the image for the gasket mount, there are red gaskets identified. What isn’t accurate is that the screws for the case travel through the plate or that the plate is sandwiched between the top and bottom case. This would nullify any benefits that gasket mount provides. ...

Figure 1: No, this is not a mistake. This is actually a real force curve I collected... I’ll be the first person in line to swear up and down that force curves are and should be the absolute gold standard of information to have about any mechanical keyboard switch prior to buying them. Even those questionable, hacked together diagrams from manufacturers provide more of an idea about how a switch could or should feel than any sort of buzzword or marketing fluff about them. If you’re serious about buying switches, weird onomatopoeic descriptions or comparisons drawn to other switches just shouldn’t cut it – unless they’re in a longform switch review from your favorite switch reviewer, that is. While many of you probably already have a half decent familiarity with force curves as a result of my introductory article to them here on Drop, as well as my over 1,200 different switches that I’ve collected force curves on to date also thanks to Drop, not many of you probably...

That would be a cool shop to go to in a mall. In some of my past posts and reviews I’ve written there have been requests to walk through my own process for building a keyboard for myself. I’m fortunate in that I get to build many keyboards. I haven’t logged every single keyboard that I’ve built, that would have been great, but hindsight is 20/20. The vast majority of the builds that I do are for other hobbyists. I built a small name for myself doing commissions and build services specializing in leveraging my extensive knowledge of the hobby to help acquire unique boards, make recommendations in build materials, and providing a truly personalized board for those who might not have known much about mechanical keyboards before reaching out to me. I started doing this service back in 2018, and now, being a dad, husband and full time IT specialist, I tend to only accept a couple commissions at a time. I’ve got my own backlog of boards, my collection seems to continually grow, and I...

The Migra TKL Prototype by Thebloodyez “This is my keyboard. There are many like it, but this one is mine.” - William H. Rupertus. In another life, if Major General William H. Rupertus, the Marine who coined the United States Marine Creed, had been a keyboard enthusiast, we might've gotten this line instead. All joking aside, this has been an article that I’ve wanted to write for quite some time. There are many reasons why we love the keyboard hobby, and today, I wanted to introduce you to one of mine—prototype keyboards and helping keyboard designers by joining prototype runs. Now, it’s not risk-free, and one should weigh the pros and cons of joining a prototype run, so I encourage you to pay attention to the disclaimer portion of this article. I know that there are prototype runs for keycaps, switches, and other cool things in our keyboard hobby, but for this article, I’ll be focusing only on keyboards. Also, please know that not every prototype run will be handled...