Week in Keyboards #33
23 Feb 2016JD45
I almost forgot, but this has been a long time coming. The JD45 is now available to pre-order. Starting at least 2 years ago this has been in development for a long time and looks to be a high quality 40%(ish keyboard). Designed by jdcarpe who you might know from the community (lately the designer behind Leandren’s 60% plates) and Wilba who has designed a lot of PCB’s (planck).
It is also being manufactured by TEX which is yet again another reputable name in keyboards. With the people that are involved it is one of the safer GB’s to participate in.
It can be bought assembled or as a kit, and supports both alps and MX switches. The case also offers a couple of options, my favourite being the HHKB style with blocked corners.
Brocaps Sale (Closing Very Soon)
There are currently (at time of writing) two bro sales happening right now. These are raffle sales so do not guarantee a cap.
They feature the new Reaper in a collectors edition, that is an optional pack that includes a t-shirt, sticker and a poster. But the cap is also available to buy by itself.
The other caps available are the ‘classic’ reaper, and some gamer sets. The classic reaper comes in IBM, Topre and MX variants whereas the gamer sets only come in either IBM or MX.
Sky Dolch
This was a GMK set run on Massdrop that did not seem to be too popular. However, Sheraton from Originative Co bought a load and they are available to buy from Originative. The Sky Dolch is a variant of Dolch (surprise) with cyan legends.
The Clack Crate
“a subscription box for mechanical keyboards.”
At this point I think you can only speculate on whether this is a good idea or not. I have never really thought of the subscription boxes in a good light and I don’t know whether you could make an affordable box with things you would want. Mechanical keyboards is not always the cheapest hobby so I don’t quite see it happening in such a good way.
But you never know, it could be good.
Wooting Keyboard
The Wooting keyboard has been known about for a while but last week brought the announcement of what made it special. If you missed that, it features analog switches. This allows you to sense how far the keys are depressed, opening up some potentially interesting possibilities.
What Wooting seem to be doing right, is responding and listening to feedback. So if you want to say something, now would be a good time.
KeyKollectiv and Booper
Something is happening between these two.
Widgie Pidge’s Prints
From HWS (Binge is a part of this) comes these very nice prints. Not directly keyboard related but HWS is a popular entity in the community and I really like them myself, so I thought they were worth mentioning.
$12 for some HWS art seems good to me.
RAMA
KingRama has seemingly come out of nowhere and has started to produce some very nice looking things.
The first which I have mentioned before is a machined aluminium keycap. Everything about it seems quite nicely designed. The packaging and the design of the keycap itself all come together.
More recently I noticed the addition of some really beautiful keyboard prints on their shop.
I like the colours, the limited edition markings the choice of keyboard. Might be a little bit expensive for me but I am certainly tempted.
RoastPotatoes Posters
Just promoting myself here. I still have HHKB Posters. They are A3 and really quite nice.
Typed on HHKB Pro 2
