Vintage Cherry Spherical Profile

[GMK_Andy]

Hey everyone - I just wanted to gauge interest in the vintage Cherry Spherical Profile (similar to DSA). I know part of our limitations at this time are that we don't have all of the molds necessary to cover many larger boards, so I'm specifically interested in 40's folks/smaller formats/splits/etc. I'll try to get a full list of the caps we do have available, but in the meantime if this is of interest to you please just let me know here so I can properly start to gauge interest and see if this is something we should start looking into.

Thanks 

**Context**
After attending Keycon and the Columbus meetup I was asked at both about the vintage Cherry Spherical Profile - so I mentioned I would start a thread for folks to share their interest/feedback on it....and here it is!


**Edit**

If you have a set you are using already, feel free to post pics as well for others to see.

[un_related]

Count me IN

[Rob27shred]

I'd be interested in this, although with decent layout coverage. Regular ANSI WKL at the very least. What other old molds are you guys hiding BTW?
Oh here is a pic (not mine) of the caps in question for people to see!

[Rhienfo]

if they are uniform like dsa then I probably wouldn't get them cause I really like a curve with keycaps and not having it is a big turn off for me, but if others like that then I'm fine with having a new profile type for those people, everyone should be catered to somewhat.

[The Pig]

Love that profile but haven't been able to use them as the original sources didn't have standard modifiers. Would be interested in sets of classic colours. 
LED windows are a must 

[notcheese]

Interested for sure!
Uniform!
Also, 1.75u and 2u spacebars, 1.25u and 1.75u shift, 1.75u enter would be great.
QAZ keys would be a great addition as well if that's possible.


Thanks!

[headshot]

count me in

[Pontus]

Very interested! 
On one of your old keycap performance sheets you list 3 different heights for the "Standard (M8)" profile, any possibility of you reviving all 3?

[Soyo]

Super duper interested.

[paperassgasket]

I see 40's support, I buy.

[patcoll]

Interested for sets with good 40s support.

[druz]

Definitely interested

[cosmic_one]

Very interested! Would love to see more spherical profile options out there.

[baconspoon]

If you give me small mod keys for 40s and 30s, I give you money. Very simple. I don't need any keys bigger than 1.75u except spacebars.

[ramble]

One more for 30s and 40s! Alphas and small bars are really all I need. 1u mods are great; some wider mods are nice but not needed. Thanks for exploring it!

[GMK_Andy]

Very interested! 
On one of your old keycap performance sheets you list 3 different heights for the "Standard (M8)" profile, any possibility of you reviving all 3?

Show Image

So in this sheet the cylindrical profile is standard Cherry (why we call it CYL now - just to differentiate from MTNU which is spherical) - the M8 profile is interesting though. I'm not sure what we have of those still, but I can look into it. I'm assuming that we would also not have quite a few molds that modern group buys would want, but I can do some digging. For the near foreseeable future though I'm going to try to just concentrate on the vintage spherical profile - if there seems to be enough interest in the M8 stuff I can make another thread for them.

[xLeHoy]

I need, count me in

[LavenderB]

I think this would also work well with an MX HHKB, since those vintage keyboards that used these had layouts that resemble an HHKB somewhat. If people agree with me on this, providing HHKB support would be a good idea. Personally, I don't think I would buy this though, because I'm just unlikely to get a keyboard I would like to use this on. Even I don't want to own that many keyboards.

[GMK_Andy]

I think this would also work well with an MX HHKB, since those vintage keyboards that used these had layouts that resemble an HHKB somewhat. If people agree with me on this, providing HHKB support would be a good idea. Personally, I don't think I would buy this though, because I'm just unlikely to get a keyboard I would like to use this on. Even I don't want to own that many keyboards.

6u center stem spacebar is always pretty unique to HHKB - I'd be very doubtful we would already have that mold currently.

[TenorMadness]

Definitely interested with 40s mods. Such a unique profile I have to add it to my collection!

[un_related]

Since Ophidios isn't wanting to post it himself, I guess I'll do the honors 



The board that raised my own awareness of the profile was his Let's Split, and after typing on them I was blown away at how comfy the caps felt. It felt as if every cap was the "scooped" version of DSA, but the dish didn't feel as narrow at the bottom as something like MT3. TEX ADA profile is extremely similar, but sadly their legends are not doubleshot, and the infilled laser-engraved legends are distracting.

Being able to run more exciting colors that GMK provides is extremely appealing to me, especially if the profile gains enough momentum to start supporting full-size boards.

**Edit**

I will raise an army of Plancks, each clad in the initial run(s) of this profile if that's what it takes to make this a reality!

[TomahawkLabs]

Dark brown caps with white legends will forever be the best looking keycap colorway possible. Makes me want to search down a set of SA Amazing Chocolatier.

[blacksimon]

While I understand that minimizing risk makes sense for new product development, investing in molds for a layout that represents under 10% of the customer base may not be the best start. If it goes poorly the total loss would be within an order of magnitude of a full base kit.

You should have analytics on hand to see the the actual target market for 40% buyers - consider a fully developed full size base kit if you're serious about the project (I think its great)

just my dos pesos

[LASERman Projects]

Have you guys seen MTNU Rascals IC?

[GMK_Andy]

While I understand that minimizing risk makes sense for new product development, investing in molds for a layout that represents under 10% of the customer base may not be the best start. If it goes poorly the total loss would be within an order of magnitude of a full base kit.

You should have analytics on hand to see the the actual target market for 40% buyers - consider a fully developed full size base kit if you're serious about the project (I think its great)

just my dos pesos

To be clear, this is why I was essentially just gauging interest from folks with 40's, smaller layouts, etc. For comprehensive sets, we are currently concentrating on Cherry and MTNU (which is the sculpted spherical). If this was something possible to run just for 40's with existing molds, that would be a different story as it would be much easier and lower risk. This is truly just gauging interest right now - are people still interested in uniform profiles? What size keyboards are you interested in it for? etc. I try to consistently watch what the community is looking for, and haven't seen a ton of uniform profile kits - certainly not like 4+ years ago when DSA was really running quite a lot (DSA Granite was the highest selling set in the community there for a spell even), so I truly am curious as well what the interest and desire for uniform profiles even is currently as well.

Thanks for taking the time to respond and give feedback