deskthority

Last week I bought a Topre RealForce 88UB all 45g.

It's as new.

It's going up for sale soon.

I can't stand the big detent hump. Nor the hard hit at the bottom. Nor the amount the keys seem to have to travel. compared to the MX-Reds. I have to have a number pad. And black writing on black switches is no use to me and I haven't really been able to type on this board because of that problem and haven't been able to give a proper go.

I do very much indeed like how quiet and calm it is.

Would I be at all likely to be able to get an all 30gram Topre, silenced, UK 105 key ISO, white or light keys with black text?

If not then Topre appears to have nothing to offer me. Despite most of these parts existing separately.

Thanks.

Yeah no official Topre board exists in that configuration.
It seems that even the gold legends on black WE21B0 is out of stock too. Closest you're going to get to the board you're after would be a modded WE21B0 - you can occasionally get uniform 30g boards on Yahoo Auctions Japan but it's going to cost you a pretty penny.

When I got a Topre Realforce (variable) it seemed far too stiff at first. I don't honestly know if I broke the keyboard in, or whether it broke me in, but after giving it some time I came to really like it. It's still a bit mushy for me, but it's a good board. I went back to Cherry MX though for the cleaner feel. Never noticed a difference in travel.

Your problem sounds more like you want a damped linear board. You might be better off fitting O-rings to a Cherry keyboard to deaden the noise, and/or track down a Cherry G80-3000 with MX reds (though, being PCB mount, you can open the switches without de-soldering) as the PCB mount Cherry G80-3000 boards are significantly quieter than plate-mounted boards.

BTW, if you think that Topre switches have a hard landing compared to Cherry MX, then you must doubt your perception, as Cherry MX switches are notorious for their hard landing, worse than any other switch.

Daniel Beardsmore wrote:if you think that Topre switches have a hard landing compared to Cherry MX, then you must doubt your perception, as Cherry MX switches are notorious for their hard landing, worse than any other switch.

No, it's due to the Topre stiff resistance that suddenly become no resistance and then thumps down at full force.

Whereas the Cherry springs become continually stiffer as they compress so cushioning the stoke as it goes down. Some of the time I barely touch the bottom with these MX-Reds. Sometimes I do hit them hard and that's annoying. At the moment my hands, and the weather, are colder and seem to be less delicate and more brutal.

I tried the three WASD O rings a couple of weeks ago and decided blue was the best as it offers the softest and quietest landing.

On the four arrow keys, that I use for games, I fitted two O rings to shorten the travel as much as possible so they go just past actuation for a rapid re-press. I'm thinking of glueing a bit of O ring at the top inside the switch to reduce the upward or pre-actuation 'excess' for even more rapid response. Whilst sometimes I play by only pushing the keys part way down, which I was also achieving with the Topre, as soon as the need to move very fast comes in, then it's bottom all the time and the tendency to miss presses due to not releasing far enough. Last week I also bought a 'Chicklet' keys board, the Logitech K750, and didn't have that problem with this. It quiet too. The press is a bit harder than I'd like.

I bought the QPAD MX-Red board as the QPAD seemed to be the quietest board on the market. I have an old Cherry G80 1000 and that very noisy, far more then the Qpad. I've not tried out the G80 3000.

Thanks for the suggestion