I've long been a tech nerd, and one of the paths someone like me can take is to get a mechanical keyboard. If you don't get it, basically mechanical keyboards are "better" than whatever basic computer keyboard most people would typically get. Generally, they are longer-lasting and better-built than the default keyboard, and have huge potential for customization. These are popular with gamers, programmers, or people who just want a nice premium keyboard for their desk setup. However, if you wander far enough into this space, keyboards are also a giant rabbit hole that consumes innocent souls. In this post I would like to talk about my journey over the years from getting my first mechanical keyboard to how I ended up with a keyboard that I'd be okay with using forever.

The first time I've heard about mechanical keyboards was probably about in the early 2010s, but I didn't actually get one myself until sometime around 2017 I think. I literally just walked into a Best Buy for some reason (I only remember I didn't go there to get the specific keyboard I bought), and came out with a Logitech G710+.

This keyboard had Cherry MX Brown switches, which are "tactile" switches that have a little bump to let you know when you have pressed the key. Apparently these are kind of controversial among keyboard nerds because they aren't tactile enough? I only found out about this relatively recently, but back then I was really happy to have a cool pro gamer keyboard that was certainly better than the laptop keyboard I was using at the time. A nice thing is that it had white backlights on the keys which meant I could use the keyboard in the dark. Although I probably would have been fine without them since I've been able to type without looking at my keyboard for a while.

I don't regret buying this keyboard, but it was definitely a starter keyboard, not something I would use forever. And I eventually needed something better. Probably the biggest problem for me was that it was too big for my (then) somewhat small desk. Part of the keyboard's size issue was it was made bigger so it like had more presence on the desk. But also apparently I had too many keys on my keyboard? Basically, it was trendy to have keyboards that have fewer keys on them around the time I was looking into a new one. The reasoning behind that is aesthetics, and that smaller keyboards are more ergonomic because you have to move your hand less to reach for the mouse. So I went looking for a tenkeyless (TKL) keyboard, which is basically a regular keyboard but without a numpad. What I settled on was the HyperX Alloy FPS Pro (bought in December 2020):

This keyboard had Cherry MX Red switches, which are "linear" switches that are smooth throughout the key press. I don't remember if I specifically chose those for some reason, but I've been happily using linear switches since that board, so I guess it was a fine choice. This HyperX keyboard wasn't perfect, but during the time I used it I really loved it, and it still holds a special place in my heart.

Out of the box, it had a big problem for me... it was too loud when pressing the keys. I was confused why it was louder than my previous board. They both used basically the same Cherry switches. If anything, in theory the Brown switches should have been louder, not the Red ones. What I found out was that my previous keyboard had silicone O-rings underneath the keycaps that dampened the key press, and I could just buy keyboard O-rings for my new board to fix this. For the first time ever I needed to modify a keyboard to rectify a problem.

It was pretty straightforward, I just had to take off all of the keycaps using a key switch removal tool included with my O-ring set, put the O-rings on the keycap stem, and put them back on the switches. Doing modification operations like these can take an hour or more, and I do not enjoy doing them, but over the years I've had to do them quite a few times.

Another problem I had with this new keyboard was getting used to the lack of a numpad. I thought it would be a seamless switch for me, but when I started using it, I realized that I used the numpad a lot more than I thought. Whenever I opened a calculator, I definitely used the numpad a lot. And I had to get used to typing all the numbers with the number row, and have to press the add or multiply keys with the shift key. Also, when typing code comments I really was used to the convenient location of the star and slash keys on the numpad. Had to suffer a little bit for a "better" keyboard...

I mentioned that I really loved this board, and if it had zero issues I probably would have still been using it today, but fate would lead to me needing to get a new keyboard again. The first thing was after some years my key switches seemingly started to "break"? Basically sometimes I would press a key and it would not register. This could have been caused by me eating at my desk all the time, with some food stuff managing to get into the key switch, but I'm not sure. I could fix this issue by pressing the key multiple times really hard, but just a tiny occasional annoyance like this was enough for me to start hunting for a new keyboard.

One other thing I was running into was my fingers starting to get fatigued when typing. This is kind of connected to some other small health issue, but regardless I needed a new keyboard that was more customizable than the one I had. With my HyperX keyboard the only easy customization option was taking off the keycaps, and unless I wanted to desolder and resolder the switches, I needed a keyboard that could let me easily change the key switches to ones that had a lighter spring than the (45g) Cherry Reds.

There were complete package keyboards similar to the ones I've bought at that point which had "hot swap" switches, but it felt kind of dumb buying all that and then setting aside or throwing away all the included switches (and potentially keycaps). So I settled on getting a "barebone" keyboard base that I would add switches and keycaps to myself. What I chose was a Glorious TKL barebone keyboard that didn't look particularly great, but did the bare minimum I needed.

With that I also chose (35g) Gateron Clear switches to go with them, which were the lightest off-the-shelf switch option I could find. There were ways of getting even lighter switches, but that requires taking the switches apart and adding lighter third-party springs to them. Not something I wanted to go through given keycap changes were kind of too much for me. And I also just reused the keycaps from my HyperX keyboard. They were perfectly fine for me.

After about an hour and a half of assembling I got everything together without issue. In March 2024, this is what my new keyboard looked like:

Reading people's experiences with them I expected the new light switches to feel weird, and it really did end up being an interesting experience. Basically they were light enough that I could never rest my fingers on top of the keys, the keys would just go down with basically no effort. This was kind of a problem because found out I did have a habit of resting my fingers on the keys (that sometimes persists to this day). And the lighter presses during typing took some time to get used to. But, great thing, my finger fatigue problems went away, and only pop up when I'm using different keyboard.

Because this new keyboard had the same layout as my previous one, switching over was seamless, and I was mostly satisfied using it for a while. I did make some minor changes though. One thing I did was get rid of the caps lock and menu keys that I accidentally pressed all the time. The barebone keyboard base made doing this super easy. All I had to do was remove the key switch and cover up the holes with some electrical tape I had around.

During this time I fell a little bit into the keyboard rabbit hole and wanted to get a really nice keyboard for myself, something more premium than what I had up until this point. I kind of forget everything I was thinking about and considering, and it took me some time to find everything I wanted, but I'll talk about what I ended up with and how.

First off, the keycaps. I was having a really hard time finding what I consider to be the perfect keycap set. I looked basically everywhere, and there were a few interesting finds, but nothing really satisfied me. Amazon was full of hit-or-miss cheap Chinese crap that was sometimes so bad I could see defects in their product photos. And from the proper keyboard retailers, the options were either too expensive, or just didn't seem right. I basically ignored AliExpress and other Chinese markets.

The keycap set I ultimately wanted was something simple yet so elusive: it had to have a uniform profile (every keycap is the same shape, no ergo curve), and it had to have no little notches on the F and J keys (as an option). I wanted this combo because I was interested in alternative keyboard layouts like Dvoark, but also I think this combo created a nice aesthetic even without that. And after searching for what felt like forever I randomly stumbled upon a Canadian(!) keyboard company called Osume that had my dream keycap set: Lilac Dreams Marshmallow.

Not only were these keycaps so nice, their packaging was so premium and so cute. Here is a little collage of that:

Next up I needed to deal with getting better switches. These was also kind of hard for me to find. The problem was similar to the keycap situation with me looking everywhere and not finding something that fits my needs. What I wanted were switches that were light, silent, and pre-lubed. And again, I just randomly stumbled upon a satisfying option.

At this time I was exploring the Japanese custom keyboard community, and heard about a legendary store in Tokyo that served this community called Yusha Kobo that has an iconic little sign outside their store with their cute mascot Kanban-chan. And on their online store I found these switches called Fairy Silents. These are a tweaked version of a switch that already exists, but it was exclusive to this store. And the tweak is what's most important to me: the springs are brought down to 35g of pressing force. So I bought 3 packs of their 35 piece sets, and also an acrylic standee of their mascot because why not?

Finally, I needed a barebone TKL base to tie this all together. This was not a long search I feel because there weren't that many options available for me to buy outright. What I ended up picking was the Monsgeek M3. I've heard about all the crazy stuff that can go into making a premium keyboard (so many layers, literally), and this was kind of the whole package just looking at the product pages. When I finally got all the parts together it was time for me to experience something that was stranger than doing a custom PC build.

(Not sure how good my explanation for the build will be, consider watching this assembly guide for this keyboard if I don't explain it well enough.) Here's a little collage of my assembly of this board:

It was quite frustrating building this keyboard for me. Basically, unlike the previous barebones keyboard I had, I needed to take this keyboard assembly apart and back together to be able to use it properly. The big thing was that the "stabilizers" were not pre-installed on this board. Stabilizers are the things that help balance the wide keys like the spacebar and the shifts. They are like a wire and some plastic pieces that slide into the sides of the wide keys to make sure they go down evenly regardless of where you press them. And putting these on was so frustrating and finicky, and I was fucking losing my mind trying to secure the stabilzers onto the PCB assembly. Maybe it would have been easier if I had a magnetized screwdriver that could hold the screw while I put it in and also a third hand.

And after maybe an hour of getting 4 of these stabilizers on, I got the keyboard base together and was ready to plug in the switches. After my previous barebone build, I could not believe that this part did not go smoothly. One little annoyance I had was that the pre-applied lubricant on the switches kind of leaked out onto my hands when I was putting them in. Maybe I should have put them in differently so my hands wouldn't get oily. But that wasn't the big problem.

The big problem was that I put in two specific keys to be able to turn of the blinding max brightness LEDs so I could press a key combo that turns the LEDs off, and the LEDs didn't turn off when I pressed that combo. I thought that maybe the keyboard was broken or something, but eventually I figured out the keyboard was working as intended, and the damn FN key I was pressing had one of its pins on the key switch bent when I put it in. And taking it out, unbending the pin, and putting it back in again just bent the pin again. After another try, it finally worked, and I didn't have to worry about the blinding LEDs anymore.

Then I went on to install the rest of the 80-ish switches, and ended up having probably over 10% of them having the switch pins bent. It's so weird, both the switch and the socket they were being put into are made by the same manufacturer (Kailh). I don't know how it managed to be so bad, or maybe why my Glorious keyboard was basically flawless with this. What was worrying was that I read about how this is a thing that happens, and if you end up bending the pins enough, they can break off and you end up with an unusable switch. Kind of shitty considering my switches were somewhat fancy ones.

And, finally, finally, after getting all the switches in properly, and installing the keycaps, I finally had a beautiful working keyboard... and I was still unsatisfied. You see, all the keys, the regular keys, sounded great, they were super quiet and pleasant to type on... but the ones that had the included stabilizers on them sounded like garbage in comparison. Now, I had to either somehow improve the stabilizers I had to be more quiet or I had to go out and find better ones.

After watching a bunch of stabilizer videos I decided the easiest option was to buy two things: stabilizers called Staebies, and also... spacebar foam. I hope at this point I don't sound completely insane. Basically, Staebies are basically really well-made stabilizers that were apparently so good they didn't need any lubrication that other stablizers needed to sound good (great because I don't want to do any lubing). And the spacebar foam basically absorbed the extra reverb that came from the big spacebar key being pressed down.

I suffered a week with my loud stabilizers before I finally got the stuff in the mail, and got to taking apart my keyboard again. This time, the assembly was not as bad because the screws for the Staebies were hex socket screws which were much easier to keep on the screwdriver (although that third hand would have still been handy). Although I should mention this is a particular screwdriver type and I was lucky I knew someone who had that exact tiny hex socket size and didn't have to go buy some screwdriver bit set for this. However, I think I could have gotten away with the screws of the included stabilizers I had before.

And again during reassembly I had to go through the fun task of putting in the switches, having them bend, and unbending them until they fit properly. This time unfortunately I lost a dear switch to excessive bending on the pin 😔

So... finally? I had perfect keyboard? Nope, bad news, nightmare scenario, the entire right esc-tilde-tab-caps-shift-ctrl column did not work. I was so fucking done. So much money spent, so much waiting, so much frustration putting everything together, and I had the best-sounding broken keyboard on my desk.

I got two theories for why this happened based on what I looked up and what I probably did to cause this. First theory was that static build up between one of the foam layers and the PCBA that I saw during building discharged a large shock and fried the pin on one of the chips that handled that column. This is why people say to ground yourself when building computers. ESD is no joke. But also this theory might not be the best one because apparently modern electronics are a lot more ESD resistant than they were in the past? The second theory was that I (knowingly) was tightening the screws a bit too much when resassembling the board because the new stabilizers were a bit too snug when putting the board back together, and that extra tightness broke one of the traces on the PCBA. This might be more likely because one of the screws I tightened a lot was pretty close to the broken column.

I was not about to go buy a new expensive keyboard base to fix all this so I reached out to Monsgeek hoping that they would send me a new PCB assembly. I explained my situation hoping they would just send it, and for a week or so of back-and-forth they basically went through all the troubleshooting steps that I knew would not work because the PCBA was broken. After finally being like "please just send me a new PCBA, this troubleshooting isn't working," they were like "oh sure, just pay this tiny fee and we'll get it to you ASAP". I should have just started the conversation with that.

After spending some gruelling weeks waiting for the new PCBA to arrive while using the old (and now relatively awful) Glorious keyboard, the replacement PCBA finally came in the mail. Reassembling the keyboard again was both frustrating (it's a pain in the butt to assemble as usual), and nerve-wracking (I had to be extra careful to not break the PCBA again). At one point I noticed something wasn't aligned correctly, and I freaked out thinking something was wrong, but it was just me not putting it together properly, which required some disassembly... totally great for my nerves.

But finally, actually finally this time, my keyboard was put together and... it worked perfectly. Finally, in May of 2025 I had an excellent keyboard to work with. Okay, it isn't perfect perfect, there are some teeny tiny issues that could be fixed with either modifications or getting a different betterer keyboard, but they are ignorable, and I'm just done at this point. I'm glad I finally have a great keyboard I love.

Going forward, I am interested in making more keyboards, but not ones made entirely out of off-the-shelf parts like the one I currently have. I'm more interested in the completely custom-designed one-off boards that are hand-wired and use custom firmware. But that's something that I still need to figure out, and hopefully you will see that in the future. Thanks for reading all this.