Hi - firstly thanks to JChan & team for designing these tactile domes - they are of excellent quality and definitely change the entire feel of the board. Wanted to provide my experience/2cents to the discussion here... hoping it's the correct place as well.
I recently acquired my first Topre board, a beautiful RF/Topre RGB, a much needed upgrade from my ~5-6 year old Das Keyboard Pro 3 w/ MX Cherry Blues. The stock Topre domes that comes with the RGB are really smooth and provide a very pleasant typing experience with a lovely "thunk" sound to them, but for some reason I felt I was missing that tactile "click" I had previously with the MX blues. Although I was I was beginning to fall in love with Topre typing experience (& the damped but sweet sound), it still felt as if I was missing something. After playing around with the APC and realizing that it wouldn't be able to add that tactile feel with it, I decided to look elsewhere and stumbled on a suggestion to try dome swapping to the BKE Redux domes. I ordered two sample packs: BKE Redux Heavies & Light domes and decided to go with a Heavy 70 set (110 was sold-out still sadly as well as all silencing ring options) as I figured they would provide a more tactile experience - the lights are nice, just felt heavies may be better for me.
Feedback on BKE Heavy's on RF/Topre RGB: After receiving the domes going through the process of removing the board, manually cutting & fitting the domes to avoid the LEDs (more on that below), and putting the board back together... twice (few domes didn't sit 100% correctly after the first install), I got to experience the fruits of my labor... and man it definitely makes a huge change to the Topre experience. Firstly, the tactile click is very apparent with these in comparison to the stock domes in both the actual feeling of hitting the keys, as well as the sound from the board. I think this is an excellent improvement to the clicky-ness of the keys themselves as well as making them feel noticeably heavier when typing on them. While the sound they provide matches the feel they give you, they do alter the "thunk" a little with it being slightly overshadowed with the tactile 'click' sound. Secondly, the keys almost have a heavy 'stickyness' to them, making them a step up for heavy handed types such as myself over the stock domes... However, I am curious to see if lubing them would improve this slightly to make them have a smoother feel since the bump felt when pushing the keys down is very evident. Does anyone think this will reduce the tactility of them or should it provide the slightly smoother feel to these without ruining the main feature of them?
I do want to try the BKE Light domes as well, but I think I'm going to give a few more days of typing on the heavies to see how it goes. In my opinion, the heavier force on the keys & tactile feel the BKE Redux domes give the keys is perfect for typing in large amounts for long periods, as well as coding & general use. On the other hand, the BKE Redux lights & stock domes seem to have an advantage for gaming experiences since they are slightly easier to press & if quick one-taps are required, they definitely have a slight advantage over the heavies. (If only I could have two boards for each dome-feel). May update this thread over the next week or so to see if that changes since I've only been typing for a couple days on the heavies... may also commit to ordering the lights when they are back in stock.
The size-issue RGB board & BKE Redux domes: Now, this is the only thing I really didn't enjoy about my dome swapping experience. The BKE Redux domes themselves are slightly larger than the stock Topre domes found on the RF/Topre RGB board, which results in them having some real size issues when you account for the LEDs on the board itself, often resulting in dulling of the LEDs due to overlapping of the domes. I discovered this by placing the domes on the actual board to represent how they would sit under the switches, and it was clear a lot of the outside rubber would overlay on top of the LEDs for that key and usually overlap slightly on the LEDs for the keys below it. To combat this, I painstakingly had to individually cut, fit, and shaped the bottom of the rubber domes to prevent it from dulling the LEDs when the board was put back together. Not sure how hard this is on production's end, but would it be possible to have a secondary cut made to accommodate the LEDs without having to manually cut & fit each dome? While I love the feel of them, this definitely required a lot of extra time & effort to prevent the LED appearance from being altered and dramatically dulled.
I'll take the board apart soon and upload some pictures if people and/or KeyClack would like to see a bit more in detail as to what I am talking about. This isn't meant to be any hate, just offering some criticism & areas of improvements for perhaps the next edition of these. Speaking of, any chance we will be seeing restocks of the silencing rings etc soon? I've been monitoring the site often and haven't seen any restocks at all in recent weeks.
tl;dr Overall, I would highly recommend switching to BKE Redux domes if you're looking to give you a lot more of that tactile feel back to your Topre board without worrying too much about having a small increase in the clicky sound & slightly less of the "soft" thunk. Specific for the heavy domes, if you're a heavy handed typer these are definitely for you as they require much more force to bottom out versus touch typing on the redux light or stock domes. My only critiques/possible improvements would be making them a little more fitted, especially for the RGB board, since they do require you to physically cut the rubber on every single piece to completely avoid any overlap on the LEDs on the PCB. Also perhaps the ability to custom order by quantity each type of dome (albeit at a higher price similar to sample packs) to provide more customization for an individual's board (or try more than 5 domes at once before getting a full set).