A Few Obscure Keyboard Switch Modifications
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...
Oct 22, 2024
Rebels with a cause Customization, by definition, implies that what’s been given is not enough. Not good enough, not personalized enough. Not cool enough. The early days of cell phone jailbreaking had this nailed. It’s not that the base product is bad. In many cases, it’s absolutely fine… for the normies. For those that don’t want to take it further. But if taken far enough, if it gets popular enough… the custom does something insidious. It presents itself alongside the original as a viable alternative. Unique, one-of-a-kind modifications never do this. It’s not their purpose. One-off modifications rather, exist to better the life of one individual by tailoring a product to their needs. My neighbor’s lawn mower with a cup holder mounted on the handle leaps to mind, but like most modifications it's pretty specific. Most folks with a push mower don’t feel the need to have a beverage so easily at hand. That said, many mods become alternatives, and just as many supplant the original. It seems to me that one of the necessities for mods or customs to grow in popularity is that they need to be just as accessible as the original, or even more accessible. For example, jailbreaking worked because it was free and could be executed by anyone with a basic knowledge of computing. So how in the world did Ed Roth become a household name? How can painstakingly imagined and crafted, one-of-a-kind cars become accessible to the public? The answer was Revell models. Revell, an American-founded plastics company made their name in the mid 1940’s and 1950’s creating model trains, military vehicles, and automobiles. According to Wikipedia’s history of Revell “starting in the late 1950s, model kits began to veer away strongly from stock presentations and focus on customizing, hot rodding, and racing. The 1960s solidified this direction with almost infinite variations in how a kit could be built. This trend showed both the extensive new marketing reach of the hobby as well as the pervasive individuality portrayed in American car customizing. Model companies hired big name customizers to create new and striking designs. Just as AMT had hired George Barris and Darryl Starbird, Revell hired Ed "Big Daddy" Roth about 1962 as their new stylist… Roth created the bubble-glassed "Beatnik Bandit" (later made even more famous when produced by Hot Wheels), the double engined "Mysterion", the asymmetrical "Orbitron", the "Outlaw" (a highly styled T bucket), and the "Road Agent". Apart from wheeled wonders, arguably his most famous creation was the "Rat Fink", an anti-Mickey Mouse figure.” To put into perspective how successful Roth's hot rod models were, in 1963 Revell paid Roth 1 cent for every one of his model kits sold and that he was paid $32,000. Thirty-two thousand models is nothing to sniff at.
So, are we cool? What’s interesting to me is that a handful of kustomizers, crafting unique creations, could inspire thousands of like-minded individuals who might not be able to afford the materials or know how to create their own car, but they could buy a model. That produced an interesting dichotomy. Their kustom creations weren’t a true alternative because the modification (a tiny cheap model) couldn’t present itself alongside the original (the buyer’s car). Instead of changing the actual culture, this created a sub-culture, or more accurately because of the rebellious nature of these hot rods, a counter-culture. Today, mechanical keyboards hold onto their counter-culture status through our rebellious prioritization of aesthetics/sound/quality over sleek/slim profiles and dirt-cheap pricing. The fact that mechanical keyboards are becoming more accessible through more and more affordable options means that it’s only time and popularity that can or will drag keyboards back into the mainstream. Until then, we can hold onto our coolness like late nineties Green Day fans. We can do better. All this said, our hobby is still too homogenous in my opinion. I scroll through seemingly endless cookie cutter keyboard videos on Instagram. There’s so much conformity and to be honest, use of keyboards as status symbols. Sure, there’s a thrill of owning a hard-to-find keyboard or expensive grail, but the boards that stop me in my shoes at meet-ups are the truly unique, trend-bucking hot rods. "Vomit" keyboards where every keycap uses a different switch... keyboards built into physical skateboards... 40% and smaller builds that push the boundaries of usability. Perhaps the most prevalent (and one I fall prey to) standard I find is that keyboards need to be “attractive”. I’d personally like to see more scratches, more dents, more grime, more punk. I’m thinking in this direction right now and look forward to sharing some of my creations soon. Not that I have the right of anything, I just want to see more innovation, and I think that sometimes we give “new and shiny” too much credence. A few years back, Bang & Olufsen asked its users to send pics of dents and scratches on their products with the story of how it happened. I don’t know if I ever loved a brand more than I did in that moment. Rather than using their platform to push replacement purchasing, they were celebrating usage. Oh that we might be more forgiving of signs of use in the products we love! Age ain’t kind. Scuffs don’t reduce something’s value unless we allow our perception of value to be skewed by newness. If seen realistically, scratches and dents are a sign of a product’s true value: Usability. As always, I want to kick it back to you. Your comments, thoughts and feedback may this a community space, not just a lecture. Tell us about your collection of counter-culter hot rods. Do your keyboards fit in more with the rebel alliance, or the Empire? Thanks again for giving me this platform to share my thoughts, and remember to keep finding the stories in everything you do.