Hi all,
I've recently discovered that key travel on both of my POK3Rs are a bit different from that of my MJ2 and FC660M. While keys are usually consistent between all rows on the latter two keyboards, there is always one row, depending on the keyset, on my two POK3Rs that feels as if it suffers from shorter key travel and "mushiness" that doesn't affect any other row. For example:
1. Leopold Dyesub in SS2
I have a set of blue and grey dyesub caps in a full 104 key + extras for FC660M kit. These are in the proprietary Leopold Step Sculpture 2 key profile, which is substantially different from both Cherry and OEM profile. In fact, I believe that many of the rows in SS2 are even lower in height than Cherry, so while Cherry keycaps maintain 4mm key travel, SS2 (I believe) is much less thought-out in that regard and possibly inconsistent in key travel (although it doesn't feel that way on any board aside from POK3Rs).
Row 3 keycaps in SS2 are peculiar because they are extremely short. On both my POK3R with browns and my POK3R with reds, this is very apparent because the Row 3 keys (ASDF) feel like keys on some low quality scissor-switch board. There is very little key travel.
On both the Majestouch 2 with blacks and FC660M with browns, this does not occur and the kit feels relatively normal and similar to Cherry profile in keyfeel.
2. PBT in Cherry profile
I'm sure you're all familiar with Cherry profile. Thing is, on my POK3Rs, the culprit is not Row 3, which you might expect to be the first set of keys to run into short key travel issues; instead with Cherry profile the issue is with Row 2 (QWERTY).
Although nowhere near as pronounced as the SS2 kit, Row 2 suffers from the same problem on my POK3Rs: what feels like reduced key travel and a rather "mushy" feeling upon bottoming out, though of course it is minimal compared to SS2's Row 3 problems.
I've thoroughly tested both my EnjoyPBT sets on all my boards multiple times and it is the same result every time: the POK3Rs and the POK3Rs only are the ones that suffer from this issue.
This leads me to ask: what is it about the POK3R that can cause these issues? Both of these Vortex boards use the same new Cherry switches as everyone else, and all four boards are steel plate mounted. There's no weird curvature on any of the boards like there is on the HHKB, so why does the problem only manifest on POK3Rs? The issue is present regardless of which case the POK3R is mounted in, whether it be a wooden case from SEALWoodworking, the stock cases, or my Tex case.
