Custom Mechanical Keyboard

People spend hundreds, if not thousands, of cash on smartphones, PCs, tablets, monitors, cars, and whatever else they can get their hands on, even if an expensive smartphone (or car, or bag, or whatever) allows us to do the same thing as a very cheap one. But what’s the difference? Why would anyone choose to spend more money in light of this?

While I can’t answer “why” someone decides to do something because those are subjective reasons, I can tell you why I spent a lot of money on my computer’s keyboard and why you might want too.

But I can tell you right now that every consideration I can write about here will eventually boil down to one question: “how much do you value having very high-quality products for everyday use?”

Quality

In general, quality products are the most expensive because quality means precision, design, and so on, and when you seek this kind of stuff, the good itself becomes very expensive for a variety of technical and commercial reasons.

Custom Mechanical Keyboard Geekery Goes Deep

Are you still interested? That’s great news. The rabbit hole is as deep as you want it to be. You can get a custom keyboard that meets almost any desire or need, including keycaps (which profile? What color scheme do you prefer? ), switches (clicky? Tactile? Linear? ), “sound profile” (are you going to chase the thock or the clack? ), layout (65%, TKL, 1800, or can you go all the way down to 40%? ), and so on.

Coming to keyboards

Two things are highly valued in the world of custom keyboards:

1. The sound that produces when you type on it
2. The material of the parts used to construct it (which influences the first point but also makes itself the keyboard more precious).

Building your own keyboard allows you, but does not guarantee, a product of such high quality that you notice how and why it differs from a cheap one as soon as you touch it. Why isn’t it guaranteed? Simply because the skills required to do a very high-quality job when assembling one yourself are not easily acquired.

So, before we go over the factors that influence the sound of a keyboard, let’s take a look at what’s in it.

At this point, I should clarify that I’m only referring to mechanical keyboards. If you don’t know the difference between these and your laptop’s keyboard, for example, you can do a quick online search, but you can recognize them by what’s inside the keycap (that piece of plastic that your fingers press).

What’s inside a mechanical keyboard?

Keyboards are elegantly simple. We have:

• The PCB: it contains the CPU that processes each keystroke, maybe some LEDs, a USB port, and many holes to plug the switches in.
• The Plate: this is essentially a layer, There different Plate materials: Aluminum, Brass, Polycarbonate, Carbon Fiber, FR4, Polyoxymethylene, and Acrylic, with holes that allows the switches to fit in. It is positioned right on the top of the PCB. Generally improves the sound and the stability of the entire keyboard.
• The Switch: this is the core piece of your keeb that allows you to transmit the keypress to your computer. There are an infinite amount of switches that differ in sound, in the response you get, and so on.
• The stabilizers: are some tiny plastic pieces with a wire that are used on longer keys (like the enter, the spacebar, etc.)

The Keycaps

The keycaps are the small plastic pieces that fit on each switch and are located beneath your thumbs.
They are manufactured with an enormous variety of different themes and palettes, which you can buy online for as much as $4 or 200 PHP (Philippine pesos), not high-quality but some are decent.

There are also some high-quality keycaps that cost as much as an entire Razer keyboard. You must wait up to 12 months from the date of payment in order to obtain them. The reason is in the manufacturing process, which is very unusual. (If you want to learn more about this, look up double-shot ABS keycaps.)
GMK is one of the most well-known manufacturers of double-shot ABS keycaps. They cannot be purchased like regular products; instead, the community, through the online store that regulates everything, organizes a group buy that must reach a minimum number of orders for the set to be produced, and then you wait something like 6 or 12 months to receive your exclusive set (meaning that people in the future cannot buy them anymore).

Here’s a picture of a set inspired by the symbolisms of Human, Water and Land.

Earth Tones — Keycaps Info (matrixzj.github.io)

At last, the sound

So, what changes or improves the sound of these keebs?
Everything. Everything from the case’s material and enclosing system to the quality of the keycaps and switch type influences the typing sound in some way.
The majority of people who are unfamiliar with mechanical keyboards believe that the switch is responsible for the sound, but there is much more to it.

But what are the issues with commercial keyboards’ sound?

The stabilizers are the first issue with commercial keyboards. This is the piece that makes the worst noise in the world (the noise is known as “rattle” if you search for it).
The second issue is that all of the cheap materials that aren’t tightly pressed together generate a lot of vibration while typing on it, resulting in a ridiculous amount of noise.
Third and final issue: regardless of how much you pay for it, all commercial keebs, when compared to custom ones, feel extremely cheap (this is mainly due to the case and the keycaps, which are the most exposed parts).

A Video