deskthority

Just wanted to share this one with you guys...

My office daily driver, NovaTouch TKL, I have just kitted it out with a DSA stock sublimated keycap set Gotta love the cherry keycap compatible stems if I may say so myself hehe
Note: this is not a CM own set, so dont ask me to sell this set for CM Or should we consider making and selling seperate keycap sets?

The colours look Granite. But the legends are another font…

It's this set btw: http://pimpmykeyboard.com/dsa-stock-sub ... ycap-sets/

Handy! I still need a matching numpad. Wonder if this in GKK will do the trick.

I have the numpad caps still laying arround actually hehe (Just in case I wanna switch to a fullsize any time soon)

I had this same set on my Novatouch for a little while before going back to the Vortex PBT white-on-black doubleshots. (CM Bram: Yes, I re-purchased a used Novatouch after returning my first one months earlier.)

Have you had a chance to try Hypersphere's silencing rings?

XMIT wrote: ↑I had this same set on my Novatouch for a little while before going back to the Vortex PBT white-on-black doubleshots. (CM Bram: Yes, I re-purchased a used Novatouch after returning my first one months earlier.)

Returned and bought again? What happened there!

Have you had a chance to try Hypersphere's silencing rings?

No, I have not tried that yet

Here you go!

http://deskthority.net/group-buys-f50/h ... 11938.html

They're epic on a NovaTouch. Check my video.

Is it still able to order or whats the current status?

Still open for orders. They won't ship until I'm back home from America in February, though! But still some space aboard this little GB.

Alright, let me look into it! Thanks for the link and headsup tho !

Wow, thanks for the link to SP's sale on this set. I tried the Vortex PBT keys on my Novatouch and I had to remove them. The damn keys would just come loose for no reason. I'd be sitting here typing and the arrow keys or the 6-pad would just shake loose off the stem. It was so incredibly annoying that I thought it was the keyboard.

For no reason at all, I thought well I guess I will try the DSA Dolch keys and so far no complaints. I may just have to order a set of the DSA stock keys that you bought.

And wow, the shift is the correct spacing and even the Q doesn't look like that dreaded O with a hash stick on the end of it. I wonder what SP's reason is not to simply use this font in place of the Gordon font?

I have those generic dyesub sets in white, gray, and blue. They kept me from going insane while I waited to obtain my Granite and Round 4 SPH sets. You can throw together a poor man's Granite with it and the ESC+Return kit from Granite, though the white keys are really white (not light gray as in Granite).

IMO, the reason SP doesn't use that typeface in place of Gorton Modified is because it looks even worse than Gorton Modified. That and the fact that they already have all the legend plates made in Gorton Modified. I wouldn't want them to waste money making up legend plates based on that big fat dyesub typeface.

CM Bram wrote: ↑

XMIT wrote: ↑I had this same set on my Novatouch for a little while before going back to the Vortex PBT white-on-black doubleshots. (CM Bram: Yes, I re-purchased a used Novatouch after returning my first one months earlier.)

Returned and bought again? What happened there!

We traded some PMs about this a while back. I decided to give the board a second go with Hypersphere's rings. They are a substantial improvement.

cswanic wrote: ↑Wow, thanks for the link to SP's sale on this set. I tried the Vortex PBT keys on my Novatouch and I had to remove them. The damn keys would just come loose for no reason. I'd be sitting here typing and the arrow keys or the 6-pad would just shake loose off the stem. It was so incredibly annoying that I thought it was the keyboard.

For no reason at all, I thought well I guess I will try the DSA Dolch keys and so far no complaints. I may just have to order a set of the DSA stock keys that you bought.

And wow, the shift is the correct spacing and even the Q doesn't look like that dreaded O with a hash stick on the end of it. I wonder what SP's reason is not to simply use this font in place of the Gordon font?

Yeap indeed, I quite fancy this set as well !

XMIT wrote: ↑ We traded some PMs about this a while back. I decided to give the board a second go with Hypersphere's rings. They are a substantial improvement.

Ah indeed now that you mention it! But good to see you are back on a NovaTouch

zslane wrote: ↑I have those generic dyesub sets in white, gray, and blue. They kept me from going insane while I waited to obtain my Granite and Round 4 SPH sets. You can throw together a poor man's Granite with it and the ESC+Return kit from Granite, though the white keys are really white (not light gray as in Granite).

IMO, the reason SP doesn't use that typeface in place of Gorton Modified is because it looks even worse than Gorton Modified. That and the fact that they already have all the legend plates made in Gorton Modified. I wouldn't want them to waste money making up legend plates based on that big fat dyesub typeface.

Ah that indeed sounds like a nice color combo

I also recently discovered that you can get those generic dyesub sets in GKK gray, which is the same light gray used in Granite, so in effect, a copy of the Granite colorway is totally doable. I don't think I noticed GKK available when I bought my sets back in August or I probably would have gotten those instead of WAN white.

zslane wrote: ↑I also recently discovered that you can get those generic dyesub sets in GKK gray, which is the same light gray used in Granite, so in effect, a copy of the Granite colorway is totally doable. I don't think I noticed GKK available when I bought my sets back in August or I probably would have gotten those instead of WAN white.

Nice! But always room for more keycaps right ?



However @all, coming back to the topic: should CM consider selling generic (or CM boards) custom key caps?

Its a good option to offer better caps, i think you know my feelings on the stock caps . Honestly i would just go for caps you can buy like the ones your rocking now, or cherry profile PBT, something that shows off the awesome switches you have in that thing . Take the O rings out as well and use that cost towards the better caps .

I would prefer it however if the barebones version was available from other places than massdrop like amazon or something.

CM Bram wrote: ↑
However @all, coming back to the topic: should CM consider selling generic (or CM boards) custom key caps?

Either that, or, I would like if CM were the first major company to actually offer quality keycaps on stock keyboards.

This is something that few manufacturers have achieved, and the newest, most expensive consumer keyboards coming out suffer from cheap, low quality and low durability ABS keycaps.

Look at this: A keyboard that costs 150€ new. That is thin ABS plastic sprayed black, legends lasered out, then coated to increase durability. Still, it's cheap, it's not durable, it looks terrible after a week (even with clean fingers stains will show on heavily-used areas) and it sounds and feels low quality. This is from the company who invented the MX switch, and who used to manufacture thick PBT dye-sub keycap sets that are now highly valued by collectors and enthusiasts.

Corsairs RGB keyboards cost even more and despite their advanced backlighting features they have failed to ship quality keycaps with their keyboards.

Logitech, QPAD and CM Storm are also guilty of this. The first two are known for producing keycaps whose stems break off within or shortly after the warranty period. This means their caps can't even last 2-3 years!
This is for keyboards using MX Switches which are rated for 50 million actuations. The switches can last for ages and so can some of the Cherry keycap sets. I am typing this on Cherry switches and keycaps from the 1990s by the way.

I have not had broken CM Storm keycaps but the caps on the backlit keyboards are fairly thin as well, and I found that the Rapid-i suffers immensely from this quality negligence. After putting my own keycaps on there, the typing experience was improved a lot. The Novatouch is a quality keyboard but the caps... Well you should know, in the US it was sold without keycaps even.

Look at companies like Ducky, and Vortex. Both produce some quality keycap sets out of thick PBT material. Vortex has not only managed to sell a stock keyboard with high-quality thick caps (the Pok3r), but also created a doubleshot PBT set for backlit keyboards. That should be the only kind of caps shipped with an expensive backlit keyboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb0v3qYML0U

Vortex caps are horrible. But Ducky does some nice PBT as stock on their high end Premier boards.

Cherry1990 wrote: ↑
Ducky Premier CC&G (PBT), SA Retro, original (1990) Cherry double shot (ABS)

How are Vortex caps horrible?

Unless they've changed everything in a year, the caps look like shit.

http://deskthority.net/product-news-f44 ... %20feeling

Also available in white:

http://deskthority.net/post232298.html#p232298

Blech.

I don't think Ducky's Premier caps are perfect either — from what I've seen, they're not quite as good as vintage dyesubs — but they tried a lot harder for timeless quality than Vortex.

Muirium wrote: ↑Unless they've changed everything in a year, the caps look like shit.

Maybe for you, but I wasn't saying that their caps look gorgeous, all I'm saying is they have produced some high quality thick PBT sets...
In the thread you linked, there was barely anyone complaining about the quality (or the looks, for that matter) of the keycap set.

Yeah, good point. Maybe the title put the rest of my fellow aesthetes off the thread. I will give one thing to Vortex: they remain thoroughly consistent to their visual style. It reads as GAMERSHEEK to me — right down to the ever present spaceship font — but perhaps some people love it. Poor bastards!

One thing that isn't a matter of subjective taste: would it hurt them to ever print a truly dark legend? Those white Poker caps are so washed out. Like lazy 90s lasering. Inexcusable cheapness.

The current generation of Vortex thick PBT doubleshots looks OK to me. Not great, but certainly not "horrible" either. And they're thickish PBT. ANSI US layout only unfortunately.

https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/in ... tail&p=773

I'm literally giggling at the amateurishness of their legends:



Does Vortex really live on another planet, where they must learn, by trial and error, how to do even the simplest things that already have been mastered for decades?

Yup, in another culture I guess ...

Yes, the legends look silly but at least they get the rest of the keycaps right.
They also have blank and front-printed sets, where this thoughtlessness isn't as obvious.
Back in the day the only company that made double-shot PBT backlit caps was Déck... I think it's safe to say that even Vortex legends are an improvement.

So far, no one seems to get both right, legends and keycap. The novatouch had alright legends, but the caps are thin.
Corsair also has decent looking legends but again, thin ABS.

Timeless beautiful legends on high quality keycaps:

- Cherry dye-sub PBT
- Cherry doubleshot ABS
- IBM PBT

CM Bram wrote: ↑ However @all, coming back to the topic: should CM consider selling generic (or CM boards) custom key caps?

Well, if you are interested I can tell you about the Spanish market and community: we are starving of decent keycaps. We are not a huge market (not yet, wait for South and Central America to join the party ), but it is impossible for anyone to get decent replacements for the crappy thin ABS keycaps that are shipped with the (quite limited) offer of ISO ES keyboards out there.

The last custom set that provided ISO ES was Granite. You do not have any other option as far as I know, not even the not-so-expensive Vortex thick PBT (available for Nordic, DE, UK and FR if I remember correctly. Someone manufacturing not so expensive and decent DS ABS or dyesub PBT (even lasered PBT!) ISO ES would be the only choice for the Spanish community.

I have "aficionado" friends that they do not have any alternative to replace their pad printed keys on their CM boards when they fade away after some time.

And please, non-gaming fonts, please!

CM Bram wrote: ↑I have just kitted it out with a DSA stock sublimated keycap set

Newbie asks:

Where to do custom 105 ISO all-row-3 sphericals and for how much? I am dyeing (ha!) for sphericals. The layout I want is quite rare.

WASD has their custom printed ABS sets for $50, which would be great, except they are cylindrical.

SP quoted me about $1500 for double-shot PBT for SA or DSA (I forgot which one) which would mean a group buy which is unlikely.

Are there other options?