The board with Gat clears when I 1st got it.
After the switch swap, I reused the blue LEDs it had in it.
Caps back on & all light up
This was a tough one to pull off successfully, especially just working with a hand pump & wick for de-soldering.
I got this board 2nd hand in a trade so I'm not sure if the LEDs or switches it came with were stock to it or not. I'm leaning towards thinking it may have been switch swapped or at least had the LEDs swapped once before from the looks of the back of the PCB. It didn't have any burn marks or lifted pads on it, but there was huge globs of solder on almost all the LED joints & some of the switch joints, I mean super over excessive amounts of solder for each joint like that. Also the legs of the LEDs were clipped high with the excess bent back towards the PCB, which made them a real challenge to remove without damaging the PCB & there was obnoxious amounts of flux left on the PCB from the crazy amount of solder that was used.
I actually started off by using the back of an artist brush I use for lube to fleck away the bigger globs of flux because there was so much of it around the joints. Thankfully after I got the LEDs & switches de-soldered & removed, a good wipe down of the PCB with 91% isopropyl alcohol removed the rest of the flux. The de-soldering was fairly tedious & worrisome because of the huge amount of solder previously used, especially with the LEDs. I had to use much higher heat & hold the iron to the joints much longer than I am usually comfortable with because of that. Thankfully I managed to get all the de-soldering done, the LEDs removed, & the switches removed without damaging the PCB in any way! It was all downhill from here!
After that I went to work lubing the stabs with super lube & lubing the switches with Geekhacker Thick Krytox mix, I got both lubes from switchtop.com. After that I put the stabs back in the plate, put switches in the 4 corners of the plate, soldered them in, installed all the switches & LEDs, then soldered everything in one go. In hindsight I am really glad I decided to go ahead & lube all the switches for this swap. The switches were pretty damn smooth stock so I just lubed one to compare. Comparing just one lubed to one stock switch while they are not installed on a board doesn't do the lubed switch justice at all, I really couldn't perceive much of a difference. But comparing this now finished board to my Pok3r with stock Cherry clears the difference in smoothness is night & day. Now that could be partially due to Cherry's new stems but either way I'm glad I took the extra time to lube the switches.
IMHO the end product came out to be easily the best feeling KB I have, I even prefer the feel of this over my recently built custom 60% with 80g Cherry blacks. The Kyrytox made the switches just so unbelievably smooth & combined with the stout stainless steel plate this board has it makes for a very pleasurable thock type sound & feel. Almost similar to what some Topre sound tests I have heard sound like, although I'm sure the feels are completely different. I'll upload a typing test video later so you guys can see what I mean. All in all I am very pleased with the results of this project, it has definitely earned a high spot in my daily driver rotation already. To top it off I'm pretty sure the GMK Sky Dolch set I have coming in the next few days has the proper keys (or at least enough keys of the right row profiles) to cover this board. If it does that'll be the endgame for this board & now my 2nd board I've reached that point with!
