New keyboard noob from Belgium

[Redostrike]

So,

I'm totally new into Mechanical keyboards. I was actually looking for a way to customize a keyboard by spray painting it. But then i bumped onto some websites to order keycaps and gotten into the Mechanical keyboards. I'm still keyboardless so no special keyboard as i await a Cherry MX sample kit. On my computer i'm more a "typer" than a gamer. If i game it's more on Console than pc but some games are just played better on pc. At the side i like stuff like Raspberry pi and arduino and linux stuff tinkering/customizing everything i can or making plans on building a mame arcade (some day when i have some room to place it). I live with my lovely girlfriend which is soon gonna be my wife. Been looking on this forum for a few days now and finally decided to register. I'm looking into buying a wasd V2. As many might not know we have azerty here so my choices are more limited i guess.

[tricheboars]

welcome good sir,

   i am going to give you some sound advice whether you want it or not.

1.  never spray paint keycaps.  you will ruin caps and be sad.
2.  wasd is alright at best. they offer awesome customization but there keycap quality is bottom of the barrel.
3.  fully programmable keyboards are plentiful if you know where to look.  with a fully programmable board it doesnt matter what layout you use.  especially if you get a keycap profile that doesnt have different profiles for different rows like dsa.
4.  this is just an opinion.  cherry mx blue and cherry mx clear are the best switches out there for typing or gaming.  reds are great for gaming but they are too light for typing and i find myself making a lot of mistakes.  browns are scratchy and are the only switch i really do not like made by cherry.  blacks are heavy so you must be a strong man to use them  buckling spring are awesome but make my hands tired fast.  topre is great but expensize.  this point is 100% my opinion and is def not shared by everyone on this site.  take it with a grain of salt.
5.  this site can be very expensive.  it isnt jokingly called "wallethack" for no reason.

[Redostrike]

Hi and thanks for your reply.

As i was mostly interested in customizing an keyboard an did bump into UV printing keys i figured spray painting a keyboard would not be necessary anymore.
As i stated i'm still a keyboard noob so i'm not sure where to start looking most of the time i find US layouts and US keycap sets with no posibility to get an AZERTY BE layout i know i can rearrange some of the keys around but mostly the symbols would be in the wrong place. I bumped into some ducky shine 3 azerty which also peek my interests so i'm still undecided and still looking around at which one i might be buying as i do need to confess i'm still not in a wallethack way (yet).

Again thanks for the pointers

[tricheboars]

so off the top of my head i can think of a few fully programmable boards that can certainly fit your needs.

phantom
ergodox (what i use)
gh60
sprit
LZ keyboards
poker II
KMAC
GONs keyboards
Trik


and there are a lot more.  these are basically the cream of the crop around here.  all of these are customs except the poker II.  i am sure there are other mass-produced keyboards out there that are fully programmable i just dont know what they are since i only buy customs now or build my own.

[esko997]

Welcome to GH! Great community here -- definitely check out the group buys forum if youre interested in buying kepcap sets, I think the toxic one is still going on now.

Enjoy!

[Redostrike]

Oh great those gons look sooo nice (and sooo expensive  heh)

I was looking into Group Buys but then i bump back to my AZERTY BE (With that toxic set) problem which is so unfortunate maybe i'll need to switch my habit too qwerty so many more option then but just switching over is not that easy if you are so familiar with something.

Again thanks for the pointers i'l keep an eye out for the group buys and will look into those programmable keyboards.

[ideus]

Welcome to GH.

[SaySo]

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