Background: In December 2015 I read an article about George Hotz and his self-driving car. A video was attached to the article, in which I spotted his keyboard. I didn't recognize what it was, so I had to look it up. It turned out it was a HHKB Pro 2. I had to learn more about this keyboard. The more I read about mechanical keyboards, the more I wanted to try one out. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who owns a mechanical keyboard, so I had to just do a lot of reading. I read so many reviews, and spent quite a lot of time investigating this world, which at the time was new to me.
After a lot of reading and watching videos on YouTube, I decided to order a HHKB Pro 2 Type-S from Japan (February 2016). Around the same time I discovered some of the mechanical keyboard communities, the one on this website, and I was really drawn in by the amount of knowledge available, and the attention to detail when it comes to mechanical keyboards. A few days after receiving the Type-S I was already hooked. It was so nice to type on compared to the rubber dome and scissor switch keyboard I had previously used (I primarily use Macs). At first I thought it would be fine to just have the keyboard at home, but it quickly turned out that I needed one at the office too (I got used to the "weird" layout much quicker than I thought, and it started feeling really natural). I ordered the second keyboard (March 2016), a HHKB Pro 2 (in black, with blank keys), a HHKB bag, set of coloured keycaps (blue ESC/red Ctrl), and an extra set of blank white/grey keycaps (the Type-S had lettered keycaps). Eventually I started looking for colored keycaps, and I ended up getting some blanks (thanks RoastPotatoes and martinyeah/HKP), which I think look really cool. I would really like a pink set of blank RealForce keycaps, but I realize I was too late to the game. Hopefully at some point, some blank colored keycaps will be available again. I was also not aware of matt3o's very cool PBT spacebar project, so I managed to miss that too (here's hoping for another round in the near future).
After having used both keyboards for a while, switching between the Type-S and the black board at the office, I realized I actually preferred the muffled sound of the Type-S. I read a couple of threads about silencing, and became interested in trying it out. Fast forward to yesterday, where I installed the silencing rings that I got from Hypersphere. So far I really like the result, I highly recommend it. They keyboard is not exactly as silent as the Type-S, but it's really close. I'm not sure which one I prefer. I guess time will tell.
In case anyone's interested, I made some recordings of me typing on the Type-S and the regular Pro 2 (both before and after silencing it). I used the built-in microphone of a 15" Retina MacBook Pro, and I made two recordings of each board (one with the keyboard on top of the built-in keyboard of the laptop, and one one the left side of the laptop). I was typing the same text (more or less) on all the boards, and I ended each recording with three taps on the awesome left shift key (which is one of my favourite sounds). I attached a .zip-file with the recordings to this post (.mp3-files created using LAME).
