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...
Finding your groove: getting into vinyl with Audio-Technica
I’d like to think that I could’ve been friends with the late Hideo Matsushita, founder of Japanese Hi-Fi powerhouse Audio-Technica. If I could, I’d travel back in time to 1960’s Tokyo, where a young Matsushita curated “vinyl listening sessions” at the Bridgestone Museum of Arts, exposing visitors to the sounds and possibilities of high end audio and the warmth of vinyl records. I imagine sitting with him in a mod coffee shop, listening to the stories of what he witnessed in those sessions, the conversations he had with visitors, and what ultimately motivated him to head back to his small apartment above a ramen restaurant and start an audio company of his own.
In the histories I’ve read regarding AT’s humble beginnings, Matsushita’s motives seem clear. Produce high end audio at affordable prices, bringing audio excellence into spaces and to customers that simply didn’t have access to it before. His first two products, the AT-1 and AT-3 phono cartridges did exactly that, and...
Hi everyone!
We’re very excited to announce our newest partnership with an affiliate partner of ours, Student Beans.
For those unfamiliar with Student Beans, this new partnership will allow us to bring student-specific discounts to the Drop community. We hope that this discount will help make getting back to school more exciting and the school year a little bit easier.
Edit: Title update
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
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
In Defense of MT3 (StoryBoardTech)
How To Design a GMK Keycap Set (GMK_Andy)
The GMK Color Matching Process (GMK_Andy)
SA Keycap Profile in 2024...