Mechanical Keyboard Sound Isn't That Simple
Figure 1: I couldn't think of a more literal way to represent this article if I tried... Looking back just a few years ago, there’s no doubt that the huge influx of people that joined the hobby at the peak of the COVID pandemic were drawn to keyboards by way of YouTube, TikTok, and other audio-visual content platforms. Even as the output from these content creators has waned in recent months, their collective impact and legacy on the keyboard hobby is rather firmly etched in the history books. As a result of all of their sound tests, build logs, and opinion videos, the message is clear to any new person joining the hobby: mechanical keyboards are all about the sound. Thock this, clack that. Whether it’s keyboards, keycaps, or even singular switches, seemingly everyone new to the hobby meticulously pores over each component of their keyboard not in an attempt to figure out how it will feel in hand, but how it will sound as they’re furiously grinding their way out from...
Mar 27, 2024
I recently built my own 'end game' keyboard with 7bit's Round 6 caps, when I decided it was time to bring this classic colorway to the realm of cherry keycaps. I've already drawn up the kits I would like to see in the group buy for this set, but these are of course not final. There are still a few question marks to deal with.
It was important to me that the original keyboard can be replicated closely, hence the extra alpha keys, Black Text Modifiers kit and having blue spacebars available separately instead of putting those into the Blue Alphas kit to not make a purchase of them mandatory.
FAQ:
Q: When? A: Depends on how fierce you guys vote! https://www.massdrop.com/vote/GMK-Space-Cadet
Q: Doubleshot? A: Yes, everything. New molds for alphas etc, no half-assing on my watch.
Q: Colevrak kit? A: Due to the secondary APL legends, a Colevrak kit would need 20+ new molds made as well. With Colevrak kits having an MOQ of 100 and only ever having reached that number once with Laser, we're talking about a 30euro (40-45$ or so) extra, making the kit cost 80-90$.
Q: 40% support? A: I'm not quite sure yet how to add 40% support to this set. I don't want to add that many keys to the base kit which already will be costing more than regular. Maybe a separate kit could be realistic.
Q: Blue alphas? A: This was exactly what Bob Ross meant by his famous saying "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.". I always start my renders with one color for all keys, apply the legends and then split off the alphas/accents etc to change their color. So when I saw the entire keyboard in blue, I knew I have to have it.
Q: Blue NorDeUK? A: Blue alphas are the icing of this cake, getting the gray kit to pass MOQ will be struggle enough.
Q: Why text-only modifiers? A: I'm trying to stick to the design of the original where possible, so using Cherry arrows for Tab/Backspace/Return/Shift keys did not seem appropriate to me. Nobody I showed this to even mentioned that those were missing so it appears people like how this looks. I hope you agree!
Q: Colors? A: Custom, I'll have GMK color match BFP from Signature Plastics for the blue keys, Gray is closest to GD which I had them mix already for GMK Oblivion alphas so I'll probably be reusing that as well. Legends are TBD, probably N9 (near black) and CP (off-white).
Q: Price? A: I can't say for sure, but let's do some napkin math. GMK Red Samurai Base Kit has 164 keys, this has 162 keys, so the price of the keys themselves would practically be identical. However we have 36 new molds that need to be made, each costing 150€, a total of 5,400€/6600$. So if we took the prices from GMK Red Samurai that's on Massdrop right now and added this cost we end up with 500:143$/1000:127$/1500:115$. But again, napkin math. 500:149$/1000:129$/1500:119$ is a good guess though IMO.
Special thanks to t0mb3ry for turning the Symbols (roman numerals and hand signals for the Symbols kit) into vector format and Chyrosran22 for supplying high resolution photos to work off of!
Thank you for reading,
/discuss