The SpaceFN concept - setting up your space key as a layer switch when held - is probably one of the most useful tweaks in the keyboard hobby. Let me explain how it works.
My SpaceFN article on kbd.news made some rounds recently - quite surprisingly given the age of this concept. This piece you're reading is a condensed version of the full post. If you're left with unanswered questions, you'll most likely find the info you're looking for in the original write-up.
On my imaginary top list of the most useful keyboard features, tweaks and hacks, SpaceFN would deserve a podium finish for sure. But what makes it so special?
In short: SpaceFN is easy to implement, easy to learn, costs nothing, can be used with any keyboard, and can improve your productivity instantly.
I will list its benefits below, but can state right at this point that the SpaceFN concept, setting up your space key as a layer switch when held, is clearly one of the most useful tweaks in the keyboard hobby....
This is a summary of how alternative layouts have been supported by kits such as Colevrak and Homing. It is not a discussion of alt layout performance and development, but if that interests you I highly recommend starting with Pascal Getreuer’s A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?). It’s a concise and comprehensive overview with links to some great sites that go deeper. He also has a separate Links about keyboards page. The Keyboard layouts doc he recommends explains layout goals and metrics in detail, summarizing the alt layouts discussed here as well as more than one hundred others.
Sculpted-profile
The majority of custom keycap sets are sculpted-profile (Cherry, SA, MT3, KAT, etc. - more on profiles generally here) so let’s start there. Because each row has a unique keycap shape, alt layouts require a unique keycap for each legend that moves off its QWERTY row.
At first there were two
The Dvorak layout was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak & William L....
Figure 1: Sometime around here is a good time to ask that question...
If you’re new to the mechanical keyboard hobby, I have no doubt that planning your first keyboard build is a bit of a daunting task. To be entirely honest with you, it’s only a tiny bit less daunting for your second or even third keyboard builds should you stay around a little while longer. You’ve got the keyboard itself to worry about, stabilizers, keycaps, and even switches on top of all of the intangible marks you want your dream keyboard to hit. Switches are especially daunting right out of the gate as there’s just so many options out there to pick from – each with their own unique specifications, manufacturers, and more. Yet, in spite of all of these differences between switches, time and time again I find people always asking about lubing switches as one of their chief concerns when it comes to picking some up. With countless numbers of content creators talking about lubing switches, its no...
DCX vs DCD vs DCL - Drop’s Keycap Profiles Explained
We’ve covered the basics of keycap profiles before—spherical/cylindrical, sculpted/uniform, etc. One thing that has come up more and more over the years as we’ve expanded our portfolio of offerings here at Drop is the distinction between some of our similar profiles. Specifically, what is the actual difference between DCX, DCD, and DCL?
Cylindrical Profiles
To recap the previous article on the topic, one of the most basic ways to separate various keycap profiles is by shape (cylindrical, spherical, or flat). DCX, DCD, and DCL are all cylindrical profiles.
The most famous cylindrical profile is Cherry profile, as defined by the original manufacturer of the keycaps—Cherry. GMK now owns those tools, and as such, only they can technically claim to produce “Cherry” profile keycaps. Similar keycap profiles are often called Cherry profile colloquially, but are in actuality slightly different. For the sake of not splitting hairs, all of the cylindrical profiles discussed here are...
3 or 5? How many pins does your switch really need?
One of the oldest questions, albeit one you don’t see very often anymore, is about 3-pin and 5-pin MX switches. Early in the custom switch scene, budding enthusiasts would need to determine whether their keyboard needs 3-pin or 5-pin switches. Today, the question doesn’t appear as often as it used to, but it is still important to know the difference and when one is a better choice.
The difference between these two types of switches is in the name, the number of pins. As seen in the pictures below, 3-pin switches have two metal legs for the contact leaves and registering of switch presses as well as the stem pole. These switches were traditionally called plate mount switches, as they relied on the plate to align the switches on the PCB. 5-pin switches have the same contact pins and stem pole but are also accompanied by two additional alignment pins on the left and right of the stem pole. These were called PCB mount switches, as they could be used without plates as the PCBs would...
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...
Keyboards at work: A rationale for returning mechanical keyboards to the office environment.
As I walk down the hall to my office each morning, I hear the discordant clattering of keys coming from my coworker’s office. In the hall… several doors down… I hear them. Like the loose teeth in my grandma’s poodle, barely hanging on, they rattle and heave. If anyone’s ever told you that mechanical keyboards are too loud, it’s simply because that person has become completely desensitized to the garbage-bomb that is the standard office computer keyboard.
In the 1980’s and 90’s, it was common to hear the sound of unmitigated excellence when you walked into an office building. The rapid gunfire-like precision of a room full of high-quality computer keyboards firing in unison. Even in the early 2000’s when I worked in a south-side Chicago newspaper newsroom, it was still filled with such keyboards. Ten to fifteen years into their professional daily use, they were still magnificent in sound and feel. Punctual, clean, decisive. In those days, professional keyboards didn’t come...
Image credit @zhugunic https://drop.com/talk/67372/gl-2-k
Do I need an amp? What are these acronyms like DAC, DSP, or DSD? What even are all the components that make up an audio chain? Let’s take a beginner’s look at the core, essential building blocks of a digital audio chain, and lay it plain what each piece does. We can cover the major pieces separately, but I’ll still include a few tips to optimize playback here. Please hit the little bookmark button and feel free to check and share this guide whenever you need a reference!
For people who need a visual and audible explanation, or are worried it would take too long to get a working knowledge of the audio chain, here is my YouTube video on this subject that is just 7 minutes long! I like writing though, so let’s get started with an overview, then break it down into what each piece does and how an upgrade would benefit the final sound quality.
Signal Path
Image credit @SpeleoFool https://drop...
As we publish more articles in the "Mech Keys How-To" series currently ongoing, navigating the various topics and finding previous articles will only become more difficult. This thread will serve as a table of contents to help add some structure to the whole project.
Feel free to also suggest future topics in this thread, as it will surely be easier to identify gaps and opportunities for further exploration when viewing everything as a whole.
Mechanical Keyboards
Introductory Topics
Mechanical vs Membrane
Sizes and Layouts of Mechanical Keyboards
Short Intro Into Split Keyboards (dovenyi)
Staggered and Ortholinear Layouts
Support for Alternate Layouts (dvorcol)
Low-Profile vs High-Profile Keyboard Designs
Build Materials and Other Case Design Considerations
Selecting Your First Mechanical Keyboard (The_Manic_Geek)
Keycaps
Keycap Materials
Keycap Profiles
DCX vs DCD vs DCL
In Defense of MT3 (StoryBoardTech)
How To Design a GMK Keycap Set (GMK_Andy)
The GMK Color...
Stabilizer Shake Down - A breakdown of modern MX-style stabilizers
One of the best parts of custom keyboards is the sound they make. It’s clean, crisp, and free from any chatter or rattles. On a well-built custom keyboard, each keystroke is solid and definitive. On the smaller keys on your keyboard, keys 1.75 units or less, you can attribute that feeling to the switches themselves. However, on larger keys, keys that are 2 units and larger, stabilizers can make or break that feeling. Today, there are a plethora of different stabilizer options available for purchase. It can be confusing trying to navigate the different brands and configurations of stabilizers. Hopefully, after reading this, you’ll have the confidence to purchase the stabilizer that fits both your budget and your needs.
Before laying out the stabilizer options, it is important to understand their function within a keyboard. Stabilizers serve two main purposes. The first is to ensure that when pressing a larger key (2 units or larger) there is consistency in the keycap press. This...
Figure 1: What could be so confusing about some pretty NOS Alps SKCL Greens?
Having thoroughly beaten my opinions to death on well over a hundred different modern, MX-style switches over the past few years, one of the most common questions I get revolves around why I hardly use and/or review vintage, non-MX style switches at all. After all, the wide world of vintage mechanical keyboard switches is full of unique, odd mechanisms and “all modern switches are just recolors of each other.” While I take personal issue with that incredibly misguided second claim, I can totally understand how people can look at the wide swathes of variation in vintage switches and naturally think that that would be something I’d gravitate towards. And for what it’s worth, vintage switches are both incredibly interesting and something that I have quite a lot of hiding away in boxes. Some of my favorite brands and styles include RAFI Hall Effect switches, Hi-Tek 725s of all forms, SMK Inverse...
SA in 2024: Where does the high-profile king stand in the modern keyboard hobby?
In early 2021, I only had eyes for SA Godspeed.
Raised in Florida across the bay from Cape Canaveral, I grew up watching space shuttle launches, and my dad’s life-long obsession with NASA, space and sci-fi quickly spread to me. At 27, I was introduced to Neil Armstrong, a personal hero, and was able to tell him the impact he had on me and my family. So on that fateful spring day when I walked into my IT department and told my coworkers that I was thinking of getting into mechanical keyboards, the first set I wanted to own was Godspeed. It took awhile, and I mean awhile for me to accumulate all the different versions of that set. It has three alphas (Solar, Lunar and Supernova), a few full alternates (Mito & Genespeed) and several alternate modifier sets including the transcendent Ares colorway. But several hundred dollars, and many months later, I had constructed a few keyboards all equipped with different versions of SA Godspeed. I made an Earth keyboard, a Mars, an Asteroid, a...
Figure 1: My Imada force gauge machine gifted to me by Drop mid-collection of a Drop Holy Panda X force curve.
Over the course of the last year or so of writing switch reviews of my own, I’ve been integrating more and more data into my descriptions and comparisons of switches. This is seen no more clearly than in the dozens of wiggly-lined graphs, known as ‘Force Curves’, that now sprout up in the dozens on each of my latest reviews. While I’ve managed to avoid dragging the discussion of force curves into any of my short articles on Drop thus far, the increasing use of them throughout my work means I should probably get around to discussing them sometime soon. After all, while I live and die by this kind of information for switches, I fully well understand that I am more obsessed about switches than the vast majority of (admittedly kind of already weird) mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. However, I think that knowing a thing or two about force curves could make a big...
The secret bedrock of any technology-heavy hobby is a whole bunch of slang and jargon that makes it feel borderline like a second language to outsiders listening in on discussions about the hobby. Mechanical keyboards are, much to your surprise I’m sure, no exception to that rule. Unfortunately, having been around for as long as I have been, I’ve become a bit of the problem and have found myself casually shooting acronyms and concepts way above my friends and coworkers heads as I talk to them about keyboards. Equally as disappointing of me is that this has also seeped into my content, as well. In fact, as I was looking through some of my old writing the other day, I realized that I have eternally used one phrase - “OEM” - without ever actually elaborating on what explicitly I mean by such in the broader context of mechanical keyboard switches. While I get that it feels really basic and easy for many people who have been deep in the hobby for some time to kind of understand...
My mechanical keyboard journey started when I fell into the rabbit hole around August 2020. Since then, I have tested over forty different switches, built or modified over twenty keyboards, and experimented with many different layouts. I usually carry a mechanical keyboard with me, and have built keyboards for friends and family members. Many consider mechanical keyboards superior to normal membrane keyboards due to their feel, sound, looks, layout options, software, and various customization options. While many swear by mechanical keyboards, they are expensive, and the landscape of mechanical keyboards is confusing and hard to navigate. That said, if you do decide to look into and possibly build one, here is some more information to guide you through the rabbit hole.
The first thing you will probably notice while looking through videos about mechanical keyboards is the sound. Many people build their custom keyboards with sound in mind, and because of this there are endless jargon...
My grandpa was a truck driver for 40 years, and in that time he used two thermoses. I own them both, and the smaller of the two, which was clearly used on hundreds of runs, has a scratched and faded line of text below the label that reads “Thermal Efficiency guaranteed 5 years.” It might as well have said “105 years” because it works as well today as the day he bought it. That thermos is incredibly well designed, well made, and I assume it will work for another 50 years unless something drastic happens to it.
You’ll often hear people say “they don’t make things like they used to” and in my experience, that’s largely true. Products in the past were often made with longevity in mind, and to be honest, it was easier to build them so sturdy back then. Tools weren’t computerized, the parts weren’t as tiny, and the types of metal and plastic they were made from were costly and often machined with a human involved in the process.
I adore technology and surround my desktop space...
Figure 1: While this is a good start from user destohfaeda, this isn't anywhere near complete...
After having collected switches for almost five consecutive years now, I can say with confidence that everything switch related comes and goes in ever-looping cycles. Strong tactile bumps towards the start of the downstroke were once novel and popular, faded out of the limelight over the past few years, and are only just now starting to make a comeback. Huge leaps in housing aesthetics happened back when the first custom colored MX-style switches began being offered in 2018, and now five years later these massive leaps in design capabilities are surging again. Even things contextually related to switches rotate around and around in cycles. One such switch-related phenomenon which repeats in a (much faster) loop is that of people wanting to make a complete list of “every switch ever”. Almost on a monthly basis for every single month since I started collecting, at least one new...
Getting good backlighting with CSTM and other south-mount keyboards
Drop's had a pretty good history of creating RGB-friendly keyboards. But even with the new south-mount CSTM keyboard line, it is possible to set up a reasonable backlit solution.
Level-set
Just to get everyone on the same page, "north-mount" LEDs refers to LEDs positioned at the top of the switch socket, which requires mounting the switch with the LED "window" on top and the pins towards the bottom of the keyboard. With certain switches and keycaps, the keycap can contact the top of the switch, resulting in a bad typing feel.
"South-mount" switches have the LED on the bottom, allowing the switch the be rotated 180 degrees, with LED window on the bottom and pins on the top. This avoids the contact problem. These days, many switches have a shortened or hollow LED window, sidestepping the contact problem, but there is still a general preference towards south-mount.
The Problem
Due to its "g4m3r" keyboard history, RGB backlighting has long had a bad rep with serious...
In defense of MT3, the most misunderstood and possibly greatest keycap profile.
Offices are tense spaces, there’s no way around it. Whether they’re silent, museum-like tombs or raucous zoos filled with energy. In this place of distraction, and often discomfort, it’s important to have tools that make you more efficient, comfortable and focused. Personally, I am lucky to work in a happy, healthy work environment with amazing coworkers, but my office is filled with distraction and on my best days it’s a challenging ecosystem in which to create.
I’ll be honest, I’m no gamer, and it wasn’t the speedy, silent linear switches or 8000Hz polling rates of gaming boards that drew me to this hobby. It was the spirit of clickety-clackety typewriters of the past and a desire to craft my words on a surface that deserved them… one that amplified my ideas and provided a comfy ambience that encouraged creativity.
I don’t feel old, and certainly don’t act old, but I’ve been a designer for 25 of my 43 years and in that whole time I’ve hated the keyboards I’ve used. With the...
Figure 1: A fantastic Kailh switch photo from Blitzenx51!
There’s any number of different details people look into when they’re trying to pick out switches for their next keyboard build. However, arguably none of them are as vague and mysterious as the materials used to make housings and stems. Yes, even as manufacturers are iffy about their spring weights and newer brands are sketchy about who actually made their switches, differentiating POM from Nylon from Polycarbonate remains to this day the least understood parts of mechanical keyboard switches. For what it’s worth, I don’t have a fix for that either. As someone who has completed a master’s degree in chemical engineering focusing on polymer science, I understand full well that attempting to reverse engineer the formulas of even the most simple keyboard switch materials would take months on end and nearly free-range access to numerous analytical instruments that companies simply won’t hand over to you. However, that...
As someone who has been writing documentation in the mechanical keyboard hobby space for many years now, I can say with utter confidence that there’s a lot of misinformation still floating around the hobby today. While some portion of these claims and community-wide thoughts can be traced back to dubious videos or posts that may as well have been carved into stone line by line, a good amount of the strange ideas still permeating throughout the hobby have come passed down in the form of community wisdom. Surely you recall your friend who got you into keyboards telling you to ‘Just do X’ or ‘Stay away from Y because of Z’, right? More likely than not, that is the same wisdom that their friend who got them into the hobby first shared with them several years ago. As you can probably put together, this mechanical keyboard-themed telephone game has led to quite some prolific ideas being spread over the years that are completely detached from reality. These tall tales, blatant lies, and...
In case you didn't catch it, we at Drop are about to launch our very first reverse dye-sub keycap set, Extended 2048 Dark (Studio Story). This is an exciting new process to add to the portfolio and opens up a lot of doors for colorways that weren't previously a possibility for us. In order to fully communicate what to expect when the keycaps hit your doorstep or mailbox, we wanted to create this thread to detail realistic expectations for reverse dye-sub keycap sets.
We have stringent quality control in place to ensure that defective or sub-standard products are not shipped to customers. However, due to the unique nature of the reverse dye-sub process and challenges that it presents (see the Story post), there may be inherent qualities to the product that appear to be non-perfect but are within the bounds of acceptable quality standards.
Here are some examples of what may be observed
Wall scratches may appear if keycaps rub against each other during transit. Note that we will...
If you think keyboard customization is mostly about switches and keycaps, let me draw your attention to the extraordinary – and often extraordinarily overlooked – split and ergonomic keyboards.
Splits may look weird and scary for the uninitiated, but the scene is thriving for a good reason. The fact that split keyboards are all over nowadays makes it even stranger that many people, myself included, may discover them only after typing on classic keyboards for decades. On my blog I've been featuring them for years, literally hundreds of them, so I'm very excited to have the opportunity to be your guide into the world of split keyboards.
Why splits?
One obvious answer would be ergonomics, but this could be misleading. Sure, people with existing health issues (RSI, carpal tunnel syndrome) may try to alleviate discomfort or pain developed on classic keyboards by turning to splits, while some others use them as a preventive measure. However, an even larger segment of split...
One of the most time-honored traditions of the mechanical keyboard community are the in-person meetups hosted all over the world each year. Unlike video game communities or trading card games, there’s neither a regular weekly meeting schedule nor a large, once-per-year type convention hall that packs every keyboard enthusiast together under one roof. Instead, usually once per year people at a state, regional, or even country-wide level gather for a grassroots organized keyboard meetup bringing keyboards, artisans, and nearly everything they have keyboard related to show off and share with other people in the hobby. Whether its organized by a few outstanding, well known community members or put on by a keyboard vendor, these meetups are almost always an amazing opportunity to get to meet other people you only know from behind a screen and to try out a bunch of keyboards, keycaps, and switches you’d otherwise have to sink money into trying out. And for those of you who have never made...
Image Credit: @Tracipang
For being one of the big three types of mechanical keyboard switches, clicky switches are often incredibly underrepresented in discussions about switches at large. Whether this is a function of them seemingly being sought after more by beginners or because of clickies’ less than stellar performance notes historically, this lack of adequate discussion often leads to newer users having a complete lack of understanding of what actually makes a clicky switch clicky and how to differentiate them. Pile on the fact that the recent year or so of releases have seen a massive uptick in the variations in clicky switch designs, and even just clicky switches on their own can be a daunting challenge for people to pull apart. In order to help establish a decent base of knowledge for people interested in clickies to start out with, I figured a brief overview of the two main types of clicky switches would be useful. (As for the other half dozen or so types, I’ll...
Admittedly, I’ve not covered much in the way of ‘frankenswitches’ either here on Drop or over on my own website where I do full length switch reviews. While part of this is because there’s already way too much variety in factory-made switches out there that I still need to cover, a much larger part of this is due to the fact that the number of frankenswitches is borderline endless at this point. Frankenswitching, for those of you who don’t know, is the act of mixing and matching parts between various types of switches in order to provide a unique combination of aesthetics, performance, or a bit of both that you simply couldn’t get elsewhere in a stock switch. Combine this idea with the fact that there are well over a thousand different MX-style switches which in theory have interchangeable parts, and you can see why I refer to this list as practically endless.
Figure 1: Not quite the monster movie that goes with 'frankenswitch', but ol' Dracula and his frankenswitches just...
New Feature—Product Tagging in Photos (+ Giveaway! - Audio Rigs Edition)
Ahoy, audiophiles! Hot on the heels of the launch event for the mech keys community, we are kicking off the Audiophile Rigs product tagging launch event (with a bonus giveaway for those who participate!).
Check out all the Rigs submissions thus far! Audiophile Rigs
What’s this about a giveaway?
More details can be found at the end! The short version: we will be giving away $100 Drop Rewards credit to one lucky winner (randomly selected) from all participating users who contribute and tag their Audiophile photos using the "Rigs" flair! In order to be eligible for giveaway prizes, your photo must include at least two tagged items (not required to be Drop products—see Tagging Non-Drop Products below). Post must be made in the first two weeks (by 2023-05-10 11:59PM PT) in order to be entered.
What is Product Tagging in Photos?
Product tagging allows you to tag any products in a Photo post—both those found on Drop currently, as well as write-ins that will be manually approved and...
Okay, so you got a new macro pad, it’s working fine, but now you want to customize the keymap/layout a bit. Where do you even start?
Image credit: @HoffmanMyster
Remapping Keys
“Mapping” refers to the relational ‘map’ between the physical keys on a keyboard and the signals sent to the computer or device when a key or key combination is pressed. For most non-mechanical keyboards, this mapping is rigid and cannot be modified. Custom keyboards and most popular mechanical keyboards can be remapped using keymapping software—sometimes proprietary, especially for the latter category of brands like Logitech or Razer. We are more interested in custom boards and other offerings that do support more keymapping customization.
Arguably the “default” and most common software solution for custom keymapping is QMK, with QMK Toolbox as their software interface to flash custom mappings. QMK is incredibly powerful, but it does have two fairly major drawbacks—it’s not newcomer-friendly...
New Feature—Product Tagging in Photos (+ Giveaway!)
Hey everyone! After a successful pre-launch for Keyboard Club members, we are ready to roll out a new feature site-wide (with a bonus giveaway for those who contribute!).
Check out all the Battlestations submissions thus far! Mech Keys Battlestations
What’s this about a giveaway?
More details can be found at the end! The short version: we will be giving away two $100 Drop Rewards credits to participating users who contribute and tag their Mech Keys photos using the Battlestations flair! In order to be eligible for giveaway prizes, your photo must include at least two tagged items (not required to be Drop products—see Tagging Non-Drop Products below).
Giveaway Categories:
▪️ Random - selected in a raffle format; each Battlestation post submitted grants one entry into the raffle
▪️ Best Photo - selected by a committee of community members known for their incredible photography work as well as contributions to the community; criteria is ultimately up to the judges, including...
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