Things I miss in the Keyboard Hobby | Real Talk
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
- What do you miss?
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I miss when people did multi page long build logs of everything, documenting their thoughts they put into the build.
Agreed, DangWang's blog was so much fun to go through
Absolutely this
I have a plan with this, the only thing is I kinda lazy to write lol. But I did put thoughts onto my build
I wish to do one later down the line
let's bring it back
I actually miss reading long and detailed ICs that are very genuine in their projects and research. I miss seeing the directions designers take in their projects and actually explaining in great detail as to why they do so. The design process is always interesting to learn, and big shoutout to Gondo who does exactly this in the Sagittarius IC ❤
Also I miss money as well.
I'm not sure if I'm just late to the hobby (2019), but off the top of my head, I can't recall anything that I "miss" regarding the vintage side of this hobby. Rather, I think we've made great progress over the years; we might even be in the "Golden Age" of vintage keyboards.
I could be biased, but it's become easier-than-ever to buy a crusty old neglected vint (For cheap, if you know where to look), and restore it into an actual daily driver. The supply is there... The online resources are there... The community is there... And it's only a matter of time before even those "common" vints become scarce.
Right now, we might take the market for granted... but I can already see a future where newcomers, enthusiasts, and even people from neighboring hobbies (Such as Vintage Computers) all desperately fight for these out-of-production keyboards left on the market... and jacking up their prices even more as a result.
Although they're not the "Dirt-Cheap getaway to a good Pre-Built" often anymore, I suspect that, someday in the future, they won't even be "affordable" anymore.
And when we reach that point, we will look back at today, 2023, and still reminisce about how "They were cheaper and easier to get, back in my days!"
In my opinion, that... is when we will start missing the "Good Old Days" of vintage keyboards.
sorry for killing the atmosphere but.. where did you personally get cheap vints from hehe
Same as you, I miss when everyone in every hobby (including mechanical keyboards) had more time to enjoy discussing the hobby sharing enthusiasm and ideas because it brought them joy to do it.
This series was amazing, I've only been in the hobby since 2019 but it hit me right in the feels. Keep up the great work dude!
I too miss having money (before I discovered IBM keyboards and had the urge to hunt down and acquire every IBM buckling sleeve keyboard on Earth for "research purposes and content").
Joined in 2015. Pretty much done with the hobby now. I miss a lot of the stuff you mentioned. Very sad to hear that duck has stopped making boards 😢
I miss TaeKeyboards, he was one of the few Keyboard TH-camrs who kinda got me into the hobby.
Now his YT to me is just a relic of an era of Keyboard TH-cam...
I miss experimenting with builds and switches as a noob. Felt very refreshing to dive into something with nothing and learn everything
I miss chokkan's videos!
I miss when the community was smaller & more familiar. Also the feeling of being really excited by a project & then finally getting it.
Also flipping destroyed the nature "I tired this out but it just wasn't for me, so I am selling it for somebody else to try out" of this hobby.
I don’t miss shit cause I am pretty new to the hobby , I watch this series of videos cause in the two first you dropped some knowledge, like TX springs are consistent …
This is one of the best video I watched for a while. Touching. I love this a lot actually.
I miss cone feet. The day Igris didn’t meet MOQ was the day good taste in the hobby died.
And finally someone talking truth to LZ. What in the world.
Although I haven’t been in the hobby for very long, I miss when boards weren’t reliant on foam to sound good.
Gotta love some history lesson you’ve spouted in this video.
But yeah, one thing that I certainly miss was when this hobby was smaller; no new ICs popping up every day, no “high-end/pristine/clouted boards” announced to be on raffle every single month, which imo makes the hobby a lot more prestige let’s say due to the variety that people owns, instead of being hypebeast-y and make those rich newcomers, for example, reluctant to learn or grow from zero..but you’re entitled to your money, so eh.
That said, in a hindsight, I was mostly a lurker back then and started having keyboard friends quite later, so that’s also a loss (in some ways) for me..
I Miss OG Cherry Dyesubs, Vintage MX Blacks and SKCM Blues
Don't we all
I miss when vintage boards were dirt cheap on ebay and a "premium high end" keyboard was $150 and marketed almost solely on its single color backlighting. Things were simple. I learned everything I could, stored the knowledge for when I could finally afford one of those dirt cheap old boards, then came back years later to utter chaos.
I miss the lower barrier to entry for keycap design. Like you mentioned, there's not a lot of "clean" design work these days, and a lot of that is because they are harder to run. It is easier to market with a robust theme and you could appeal to a larger customer pool. Don't get be wrong, I like big projects, but I am sad I didn't run some simpler designs when that was easier to do. Not many vendors willing to run a 250 MOQ GMK set these days.
I am a gamer from Taiwan, probably around 2018 or so. Tiffany was the mainstream at that time and I got into it about 5 years ago. But damn, I really miss the old times, take me back, please.
Speaking of novelty, luckily when I started, the amount of knowledge available in Taiwan was as scarce as finding vintage blacks on the roadside. So I could still enjoy the freshness of being a newbie, buying tofu, JTK, and the like, and never getting tired of it. But now, five years later, everything has changed. In Taiwan, there are all kinds of IC with inconsistent quality, and a bunch of players who wait for others to provide information but are unwilling to do their own homework (although I'm now contributing to destroying others' freshness by providing such content, feeling guilty). Take me back, please.
But one thing that hasn't changed much is that I never worry about my money, because I never keep much money on hand, at most I leave $4 to buy fried chicken, LOL. If I have extra, I'll spend it on a geon fork, which can save my life. Why on earth did they develop flex cut to torture me, damn.
I miss when it took time and mental capacity to piece together a build.
I miss when I didn’t know about the keeb rabbit hole and was blissfully ignorant with my clicky razer
24:45 Man am I glad you are also just super daunted by the PCBs. That's a rabbit hole I can't bring myself down into, for the better of my life and wallet. Ended up paying someone on Fiverr for a PCB design and it went super great. So glad I didn't waste crazy time and money to create something less professional.
The keyboard council agrees with everything that tis' fine gentleman said.
Thank you for your informative video series. Looking forward to watching the next "series" you put out!
Dove in last year, so relatively new. I dropped in around the time foam was starting to become popular. I miss when foam was a novel thing to only be used in very specific circumstances for certain boards. It became trendy and then was perpetuated in nearly every board across all price ranges, and design suffered for it. Now it sparks heated debate (to the point of vitriol) if even mentioned and caused the community to become even more fragmented. Same thing with flex cuts on the PCB. I wish foam and flex cuts didn’t divide the community like it has.
I miss quality rubber dome keyboards like the Model M. Was still a little bit clacky but not annoyingly loud. I don't think very many people build quality ones like that anymore.
i haven't fully watched it yet, but i miss seeing switches that are NOT just yet another MX switch. what about SMK 2nd gen? space invaders? katano type c? hosiden? mitsumi? there are so many different types of switches that would probably outperform MX - IF they were made with new and good quality molds, materials and tolerances - up to current standards. i miss companies trying to do their own thing. now the most innovative thing in terms of switches has been what? TTC with their redesigned round-top housings? i don't count zeal clickiez because it has already been done before with proworld/keyworld clickies.
I see IBM, i approve
I miss when I didnt know about custom keyboards
Although it’s a bit late and my second watch of this, I miss the people who actually understand gb models and things as simple as in-stock raffles, now when I open Reddit I see people complaining about group buys when they don’t even understand the reason something is run as a group buy. I miss a community who actually had common sense who could educate others when now I actually see people defending Kalam and asking about a “Thocky creamy keyboard build”
Nice vid nice shirt
It is great that you and the lads can order some mx black for 28 cents and milky top gats for 25 cents off geon, split shipping costs, and be happy. I miss simons young face before 65% top right blocker boards took his sanity.
Ok so everything was better back on the day. Got it
I miss you
I too miss having way less knowledge, but I guess it works not only in keyboards. I mostly lost any interest in playing Minecraft simply because of the fact that I know too much about it and it's just not fun anymore when I don't discover new things every day by playing it.
On Minecraft specifically, if you want to get into a similar but different and deeper game, have a look at Vintage Story.
Knowledge wise, just picking up a €50 mech out of curiosity and daily-driving that was a fun time for me, fixing the issues it got as they developed.
Since I've watched way too much keyboard content, which has gotten uninteresting due to the recent trends mentioned in the videos.
I'm interested in new or weird stuff, upgraded my keyboard to a buckling springs board because I wanted to see what those switches are like.
Which again I am happy with as it avoids having to deal with all the hype and misinformation around overpriced or hard to get parts.
I miss pre 2019 before gmk fucked up their stab tooling which led the whole scene into boutique stabilizers
Hello fellow Keyboards
i miss magnetic custom coiled cables
tried to make my own and failed, what a waste of time.
I use a regular non coiled magnetic cable now.
I miss caps lock actually locking
I joined in early 2021 because I hated typing on a k70 rapidfire. This is the best the hobby has been since I joined, I don't miss anything tbh.
i miss old sp pricing
i miss duck
and some old kustoms
i miss old kustoms
I miss when JWK was still making stealios
Tray mount best mount
I miss You
I miss the smaller communities where people knew each other. I miss the time when people didn’t expect every GB to be an Amazon order. And I miss being impressed by new boards, having had the luxury of building many often now a board will just be “feels like a board with nice linears”.
Do you have any spring recommendations for swapping, Simon?
Tx springs are solid, 57g med as a base.
Go heavier/longer/shorter for your preference
I just miss the older customs that were just well you know top mounts with OTD-styled flexcuts and stuff like that but then all these boards came out with just flex cuts in the plate, PCB, everything then they just had to pack it with Foam + PE Foam to get it to sound like something. Then funny enough the foam just destroys the idea of using the flex cuts to make the board flex but hey that's the brain drain we're seeing nowadays.
-👴🏻
I really miss the pinnacle65
real
yea dn are
@@ch33kybunn3y :simonnewspaper:
I miss the days of cheap alps keyboards. I love alps switches but at the end of the day they're just another type of switch that has pros and cons like any other. Now people want like over $100 for a Focus FK-2001 which is insane as there are TONS of them. I think the high price of a keyboard you need an adapter/converter to just use is keeping people from trying something they might like and it sucks. I've sold all my vintage boards at prices I would pay for their condition and wouldn't you know it I have none left now!
But these days custom alps is as easy as it's ever been with makers making plate files public and those Tai-Hao keysets you can get for $55 that have 140 keys and really solid compatibility. I just wish the cost of entry wasn't so stupidly high so that more people can try out a different type of switch.
I miss when tofu was king
I got into this hobby too recently to really miss anything.. (sept. last year) I started from reading articles on ArsTechnica about Keychron "Mac mechanical keyboards" and I remember obsessing over which one I should get.. I decided on a K2 because I couldn't imagine myself without function keys xD
Now I am so far down the rabbit hole that I'm typing on a corne that I had to build myself~ I do feel like I have ruined myself going split ortho, because now all of my other boards are just pretty decorations.. but I guess that's not so bad. ^^;
I miss people not simping for clones while hating and shitting on the actual designers, I miss when flipping was not a business, I miss when stupid uninspired kpop TKLs were not a thing, and what I miss the most is MrKeebs being active in the community
Yeah and then those tkls got flipped for $2000 lol saw many IU going for >1800. A dude with a proto tried to go with 2000 on r/mm I saw.
Simon can you design a board
Simon: "I read all the comments"
me: penis hihihi
I miss being able to truly vintage hunt, locally & online ($35 Pingmaster days rocked!). Don't get me wrong it's not impossible to find vintage boards nowadays, but with the hobby blowing up most people do know what they have & price it like that. Been years since I got a great deal on a vintage KB.
!favswitch
I miss having to sell things at reasonable prices. Now to sell a GMK set I have slice those prices by a steep percentage at a loss.
I miss when long poles (extended length) didn't exist.
I miss the time when misinformation wasn't so readily available- rather wasn't the dominant narrative (like as we seen with Keybored and other youtubers trying to explain sound and various materials affecting each other)
For some time, I think people didn't really understand how things worked, but now youtubers are coming up with their own incorrect theories- and I miss the time when people didn't know and actually tried to figure out things
For me it's a bit different since I entered the hobby late 2019 which was almost to the peak influx of enthusiast coming in during Covid. It was hard to get lube and accessories, nothing was instock, and Aftermarket prices were super crazy.
Now we have more than 10 GMK sets in stock, and have chances of being sold for clearance, lots of vendors to buy accessories, lube, switches, etc., and Aftermarket prices have calmed down a bit (except for alps, fk you alps). I guess the only thing is that I never got to experience pre-covid enthusiam on this hobby and hopefully, we get to get back to the good thing from that era.
i miss when i was contnet with my pok3r boards :)
Miss the period when IBM Pingmasters were $25+S/H.
EDIT: Regarding the springs, have you tried SPRiT Slow Vs?
Don't fully remember when i joined, but it was a few months before the 'Tfue' era (shivers).
As i'm only early 20s, i have never experienced anything vintage or remotely premium, but am very aware of the vintage scene and honestly how much better it seemed. They had actual switch innovation and not just the recolours and even more recolours of the modern MX platform.
Also the trend of foam and flex is really... 'interesting' to me... idk why people want to type on trampolines but preference i guess lol.
It's sad to see people chasing 'creamy thocc' which is just overlubed switches and tonnes of foam and everything with PE foam sounds the same and it feels like the 'normies' are driving this trend. It makes sense for designers to cater to this crowd, but there's not a lot of variety in that market.
Also it would be nice to see boards without all the bs PVD and mirror polished weights. We just need a basic ass TKL with a clean sound with no foam, no flex cuts, no fancy weights, and not gasket mounted. A top-mount/tadpole mount Keychron Q board would be great
cue the boomer meme
I miss foam, flex cuts, and clone keycaps.
Lol i don’t
I miss the lack of clout chasing and sheer enthusiasm people would have alongside me about learning more about this hobby. Instead of asking "what's the best XYZ?"
I miss cheap vints.
Seems like anything cool these days costs a massive premium.
i miss the hobby being more interested in experimentation and tinkering rather than catering more to normies. i entered the hobby around 2017 and had a lot of fun testing different switches, playing around with different frankenswitch combinations, trying different lube/lube combinations, finding and desoldering decently-priced vint boards, etc. i remember mike from NK sending out samples of different lube to find a nice new keyboard lube (which led to him stocking christo lube), and now he sells switches pre-lubed with 205, geared towards people who aren't interested in learning to lube/experimenting. not that that's inherently a bad thing, and it makes sense business-wise, but it's a dispiriting sign of what's happened to the hobby. what feels like a majority of boards coming out are just trying to capture hype (and justify a high price-tag,) and have little to no unique or interesting design features. that said, thoughtfully designed boards still pop up, but they feel pretty few and far between.
Was just thinking about how the hobby isn't as hot as it was during the heavy COVID era.
I'm still fairly new to the hobby but I miss being wowed by r/customkeyboards posts
TFUE partnering with NovelKeys made me cringe. I knew there would be an influx of normies.
I miss the old Kanye
same
I'm pretty new to the hobby. I first got into it by looking for a good gaming keyboard for my brother (I like to be a very well informed consumer), and I decided on a Corsair K70. Man, when we first opened that thing we were BLOWN AWAY at how good it was. Those Cherry MX Reds felt insanely smooth and the whole thing was MUCH more enjoyable compared to our old rubber dome logitech boards. That brother got my Q1 (which blew me away when I got it a few months later) and the Corsair went to the youngest after I got the board I designed working, but going back to use it every here and there is just seems so much worse. I miss being able to get new boards that were miles and miles better than what I used to have.