I joined a few weeks ago but I have been lurking since before then.
What originally got me into mechanical keyboards was actually my mom going on and on about it for years. For as long as I can remember she would always go on about how she just loved mechanical keyboards; it was the clicking sound she loved. Well a couple years ago, having been an avid lurker on /g/ where I first re-learned about mechanical boards, I did a very small bit of research and managed to get her a new keyboard for her birthday. Thermaltake Poseidon with MX Browns. She absolutely loved it.
After a while, and more /g/ stalking, I started to get more and more into mechanical keyboards and I just wanted to keep trying them out for myself. Eventually, as everyone in my house works at UCF, I was able to have my dad sit on the lookout for an old IBM Wheelwriter typewriter (the one I eventually got was a 1500 model). That was my first testing of buckling springs. I absolutely fell in love. The only issue was that I couldn't use it on my computer. Everything that I was typing had to be on a physical piece of paper, and that wasn't quite what I was looking for. After a few months I saw my boss had put a Model M on the recycle pallet at work (I work in surplus), said something about it being a PS/2 interface and we don't sell those. Well when he wasn't around I picked up that bad boy and took it home.
Since it had come out of some storage room, it was extremely dusty as well as covered in something that I don't even want to know the identity of. After spending an afternoon cleaning it, which was a real pain as the caps are the two-piece caps, I finally had a new keyboard. I quickly turned off my computer, retired the Razer Deathstalker I was using before, and plugged in the Model M. While the keys were slightly heavier than the typewriter, they were so comfy to type on. But eventually I ran into another problem. The sheer size of the thing took up way too much desk space AND between the size and the weight, it was extremely impractical to take with me to LAN parties at my friend's house. Right before this I had learned of Massdrop and I knew that they had a keyboard community on there that would start drops, so I started reading up on keyboards. Eventually it led me here, reading reviews of switches as well as full boards, opinions between TKL, full size, and 60%, etc. Eventually I settled on the KBP V60 Mini with clears (joined the drop on MD that ran early May), and I ALMOST couldn't be happier.
While I love the keyboard, I have a few more thoughts. I would like a white or granite style color scheme with the keys as well as a new case. Also the green/red lights don't really match with anything around my room so I'm looking into changing those out with some white LEDs. And finally just last week I found out that when I'm writing drum parts in Guitar Pro 5 (since I don't have a drum kit to mic, nor do I posses the skills to actually play drums) it can be a real pain to be out dedicated arrow keys and a number pad. So the next purchases I have to make (that I can see right now) would be caps (stalking for the "perfect set" which would be a sort of granite in a DSA/SA profile), a new case (looking into making my own but I have absolutely no clue what CNC machining costs here in Orlando, saw a thread somewhere not here that said depending on size, service can be anywhere from 100 and up which is definitely not optimal), a new USB cable that I'd be making myself anyways to match the color scheme of the board (knowledge acquired thanks to stalking some of nubbinator's threads; if you see this, I thank you dearly for posting those), and a separate keypad (
hopefully that sidekick in the IC board).
Anyways, that's all me, but what finally made me choose to join up on the forum proper was a hope to find more group buys (and sweet jesus, the Mira TKL in the IC is beautiful), at first just keysets, but it seems like I'm looking at everything. Thankfully I'm too poor at the moment to be making unnecessary purchases.
Also, I believe I've already met Rowdy due to a slight mess up with posting in a different thread, so if you see this post, hello again