What a find! It’s hard to go wrong with any kind of IBM buckling spring.

I’ve got a kage with NOS blues and a dolphin with SKCL green. Both did cost me a hell of a lot of money, but these 2 boards are sort of the culmination of what I like about custom keyboards and were a couple years in the making from when I had the idea. There was an orange alps board planned but I’m not the biggest fan of tactile switches. That’s why I’ve been looking into topre, as tactile offerings from MX designs aren’t great, and alps are either expensive as hell(brown alps) or have to be paper modded which when I did it really affected the feel of the switches.

Cup rubber seems to be the true end game for tactile switches, so I’ll keep looking for a deal on a realforce.

I’ve been looking for a topre board but I cannot for the life of me justify the crazy price tag for an ANSI realforce. It doesn’t help that I’m steadfast in my “only TKL” layout choice, but I’ve spent way too much money to find out that I just prefer TKL’s. So despite trying a HHKB at a meetup I’ll never own one because of the layout. I know that buying a realforce from Japan is an option, but ISO-style return is just bleh, I’m too used to hitting return with my pinky. Pretty much all of the boards I’ve seen on mercari and yahoo auctions JP are ISO-style return.

It just seems fun to mod something that isn’t a MX platform, and I don’t really open my alps switches unless I have to. But with topre you can just take it all apart and change the sliders and domes and such, so you could really dial in the board to exactly how you want it. Plus the good feeling of oneness with cup rubber crowd is definitely on the rise as more and more custom groupbuy boards have EC support.

I just wish the cost for an ANSI realforce was so high, otherwise topre would probably be my daily. But I know how it entitled it is to complain about prices when I have 2 alps custom keyboards.

On my F77 I put a light coat of 205g0 inside the barrel stabilizer insert and it helps at least a little bit. I wouldn’t go too hard with the coating though.

I have multiple keyboards because one just isn’t enough when there is so much out there. But really it’s more of I want to using something that lines up with my preferences, and since I’m human my preferences change over time. I used to be a vehement clicky hater until I tried alps clickes which are just sublime. It’s fun to customize anything to your liking, and that thing happens to be keyboards for me.

The process of finding a really cool keyboard project and planning out a whole build is still fun after the 5 years I’ve been into mech keyboards. And there is no shortage of cool keyboards projects even if the hobby has slowed down from the COVID boom.

For the Zoom TKL I know it isn’t compatible with standard h87 pcbs as the USB port is in the center of the board. The h87nu might work but I’m not sure if it would physically conform to the case dimensions. Plus you would need the daughter-board for the 87nu which also might not have a spot in the case. Best case would be to ask in their discord and see if someone knows or can do a test fit.

Or just wait for round 2 of the Zoom TKL, Wuque usually comes out with more PCBs on product updates like with the ikki68.