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Introducing Drop Signature Series Keyboards : Round 1
Most of us got started in the mechanical keyboard hobby in the same way: we saw a beautiful keyboard and just had to have it. Asking “how do I get that?” always resulted in a convoluted epic quest. We’d need to scour mechmarket, group buys, and an obscure collection of vendor sites to gather components, while taking many months and costing a small fortune, all in pursuit of the “perfect build”.
While we admire this pursuit and feel it’s an integral part of the hobby, at Drop, our goal has always been to expand enthusiast communities. This comes from two approaches: creating innovative products that push the envelope on product development, and making those products increasingly accessible to the community. We’re proud of our previous innovations such as GMK’s first custom keycap colorways, the first scale-produced hotswap sockets, and the gorgeous MT3 profile keycaps. And while we will continue to innovate with interesting products like the 1800-layout SHIFT and gasket-mount designs, we’re simultaneously pushing to make these products available for purchase, shipping immediately.
Nearly 85% of our mechanical keyboard sales now come from keyboards and components that we hold in inventory.
We’re always listening, and with global interest in mechanical keyboards at an all-time high, the wave of user requests and community interest has become increasingly clear:
We’d like to avoid the gatekeeping that plagues the community and try to meet this need with the launch of our Signature Series Keyboards. These are 100% prebuilt boards using some of our most popular case colors, layouts, switches and keycaps. We've even lubed the stabilizers to make them quieter for good measure. For round 1, we’ve created three distinct keyboard builds and they will be available for sale with immediate shipping.
The initial set of builds has been in the works for the past 4 months and we plan to restock them based on component availability. In addition, we’ve already started thinking about specifications and designs for future rounds of Signature Series Keyboards. Our goal will be to build up a full library of beautiful, ready to use keyboards- all available at the click of a button.
With that, let’s have a quick look at the inaugural round of keyboards.
Space Race
(Edited by moderator Kevin)
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Kenshiro70
137
Nov 12, 2020
Two words: rotary encoder.
Wrote a song about it. Goes like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGNiXGX2nLU
jalfonso
110
Oct 24, 2020
All three boards look fantastic. I would like a high profile version of the 1800R(shift i think) layout you currently offer. The sound coming out of HP kbs are so much better in my opinion.
Sekiza
2
Oct 23, 2020
I'd like to see one without any rgb to give a more purist feel , but they definitely do look fantastic.
LWNYC
323
Oct 21, 2020
Of the 3, I thought the red Sentinel CTRL would be more popular. Boy, am I ever wrong.
A day into the offer, in last place with only 9 orders, behind 10 for Captain and 23 for Space Race.
Rejeckted
206
Oct 21, 2020
Sorry to hijack this, but Drop should contact Painmaster from GH, and jumpstart the VE.A 2nd group buy (or take it over if they're no longer interested). That board was so cool, but it looks like it has stalled permanently. Instead we just get the same old CTRL and ALT variants *yawn*
Not complaining, lots of newbies will love these styled 'tuned out of the box' keebs. Just a shame drop doesn't seem interested in the people who aren't newbies. Give us intermediate/veterans some cool stuff!
(Edited)
A community member
Oct 21, 2020
Rejeckted"Just a shame drop doesn't seem interested in the people who aren't newbies."
As an enthusiast myself, I can tell you that is not true. We have products in the works that are targeted more towards enthusiasts than newcomers.
Kevin
5434
Outreach
Oct 21, 2020
RejecktedThe community is plagued by a desire for a ton of variability (lots of interesting layouts, keycap profiles, PCBs, etc.) and a lack of scale. This has led to the current mess where the majority of products are cobbled together by amateur, semi-professional, and professional group-buy runners who are at the mercy of small contract manufacturers, low MOQ/high price production, with consistent delays.
The long game of making the Mech Keys community better is to 10x its size by making it more accessible, and then the economics are in favor of all kinds of cool and interesting projects.
That being said we're barely helping the situation. In the past year the "mainstream" projects we've released are Drop Skylight Keycaps, the ENTR Keyboard, and now these Signature Series keyboards. Compare this to the dozen+ GMK/SP/MT3 keycap sets, SHIFT, Holy Pandas Switches, Custom Anodized Cases, Preonic, Planck, Tokyo60, Carina.. and we're still heavily weighted in the territory of intermediate/veteran keyboarder.
Visca
42
Oct 20, 2020
I've got a slight feeling that Captain's keycaps would fit Space Race better and vice-versa?
Nice initiative, by the way! Would be cool to have a mix and match option for different case colors and keycaps sets, if that's feasible. And also some 75% love in the future hahaha
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