Week in Keyboards #4

07 Jul 2015

Community

Geekhack

Geekhack is back with new hosting and all seems good. The DOS ended and not a lot was said.
With the return of Geekhack, a long time moderator and site admin Mkawa has stepped down from those roles.

Board Makers

For those who don’t know this is a mechanical keyboard podcast This continues to be a very good podcast that I very much enjoy. For anyone in the mechanical keyboard hobby, this podcast will give you some insight and information into the whole keyboard process.
I was most excited for the Atomic PCB’s which are getting closer. There is a lot of shipping around involved but the coming weeks could be interesting for the Atomic.

Ripster

Today I was surprised with a new wealth of ripster posts. This all happened very quickly today but I am happy to see ripsters guides making a comeback.

With the quiet announcement/discovery of the QuickFire Rapid XTi Ripster has a sample and has posted a gallery.
https://redd.it/3brz70
From the looks of things this looks to be a nice stock keyboard.

Keyboards

The Diverge II

Blahlicus is back with the second revision of the ErgoDox alternative the Diverge II. This is really a great project as it is making split keyboards more accessible than the ErgoDox did. It is cheaper and only uses 1u caps. You can preorder it with a surprising amount of custom options. You can choose the switches how assembled you want it, the colour of the case and the keycaps. Blahlicus is another rare member of the community who is offering something quite special.

The Last KBT Keyboards

I found this to be the most interesting and keyboard news this week as it is at least a new product. I believe this was teased a while back with the announcement of KBT making their own switches, and this is what they have done.

With two sources in Chinese I do not exactly feel informed on the specifics of the keyboard and the switches. The keyboard is called the ‘Next’ and features KBTs ‘Squirrel Axis Switches’. These switches both remind me of Gateron switches and project zealio at this point do not know if there is any connection.
The keyboard itself has 108 keys and blue led’s. The project page suggests something about the case being low profile and thin without being too heavy.

I also found it interesting that the project is being crowdfunded. The ‘kickstarter’ has rewards such as a big-ass enter key pillow and a keychain.

EliteKeyboards

The HHKB Pro 2 is $15 off at the moment. This is not the greatest deal, but if you are in America you wont find it much cheaper at a retail location.

Mechanicalkeyboards.com Stocking FC660C

This has been quite the hard keyboard to get hold of lately, and mk.com is making that easier. If I hadn’t a HHKB, I would be seriously tempted by this.

Signs of the New PMK

PMK have just put up the deep space DSA set up in their store for purchase. This is all part of them stocking popular GB’s of keycaps which are always in demand. I am interested to see how well this works. This could be very beneficial for PMK and I do hope it works out because the community can only benefit from this.

The Last Brobot V2 Auction

This is most definitely artisan territory, but this is a limited engagement. A Topre and an MX brobot are up for auction on [CTRL]ALT. These are aluminium CNC milled brobots which will not go cheap. Although you only have a day, this will quickly go out of many peoples price range.

Hotkeys Sale

Just a heads up a sale is happening tomorrow on the 8th of July. This is featuring the new designs that were shown a while back in his design thread on geekhack. The best pictures are on his instagram

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Typed on Cherry MX 6.0

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