Mechanical Keyboard Sound Isn't That Simple
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...
Mar 27, 2024
In the case of the IC60 kit, we have all the components staged and ready to go on the line in a moment's notice. However, there were a couple complications with the Alphabet layout and revisions were needed on the plates to make sure everyone receives a fully working product.
The new samples are already underway, once that's confirmed to work flawlessly, everything will be produced and shipped.
For all intents and purposes, everything is ready to go - this delay shouldn't be much longer and we should have more concrete news for everyone by the next update.
However, during production we found some small nagging issues that make the user experience less than ideal. Being the perfectionists that they are, Input Club asked we add a few more changes to address the issues we've found.
Also, not to nitpick but the drop ended on 3/1/16 - it's been 2 and a half months.
Like seriously. Instead of just delivering something you know is broken or has issues you're doing the right thing for your customers and making sure we get a working product the way we expect to get it. You also probably won't get thanked by many people for it, so here you go from me: Thank you.
No, it isn't an ideal situation but you know that. You've admitted it. You offered refunds. You're keeping us in the loop. You're doing what you should be and that's awesome.
I'll sit here with my soldering iron and SIP sockets and patiently wait to build my keyboard when it gets here.
Stay awesome mass drop and ic i'm eagerly awaiting the a product of the quality i want over a product delivered in a rush.
I QA software currently and hardware is somewhat similar. It's hard to tell you've got an issue until you're running bigger test batches and assembling things to make sure what you're going to ship is good to go.
With a company like Massdrop they also tend to have a few points of contact with the product. Your switches come from one place, your plates and cases come from another. Electronic components may come from a third. You have to rely on these companies to get product to your assembly point reliably and in a timely manner. If you've ever coordinated multiple companies, this is incredibly difficult. One of them having a setback or equipment failure means you get a delay on the entire product. These are delays you just can't plan for.
Then there's shipping delays. Bad weather, shitty shipping services used by your component suppliers, missing parts of shipments, or other issues can come up. It's all time nibbled away from the manufacturing time and shipping time needed, all of which is subject to delays and issues of their own.
You can plan some padding in there which will give the illusion of a product shipping "early" if nothing goes wrong, but you don't want to plan too much or people may complain even if the product ships "early".
Now if you're wondering why Massdrop doesn't just say this, they may be unable to. Contractually they may not be able to discuss delays and where they come from on some drops due to agreements with vendors. Or, more likely, they may simply not want to discuss these delays so vendors don't get pissed off at the blame being put on them. We all want to keep getting our awesome deals on stuff.
There's a lot of issues that can happen!