Finally got a chance to take some pics after building the board this past weekend. The board's been at work for 3 days now, and I've absolutely no complaints.
The gasket mounting works wonderfully -- the plate sits nice and tight and makes assembly/disassembly very straightforward. It's a much easier system than the
356 Mini's rubber o-ring wrapped around the PCB+plate assembly. The plates are immaculate, I'm really enjoying the brass so far. I built it with 72g Silent MX Blacks but I think I may switch them out for 65g Vintage MX Blacks for a more raw feel of the brass plate. It's got a great soft touch.
The plate's "wings" that rest on the bottom half of the case are quite large, which gives the plate a large platform to rest on. There are 6 large rubber gaskets that match up with the wings along the front and rear edges of the case. These firmly press the large wings onto the bottom half of the case. The tight fitment of the rubber gaskets on those large mounts seems to add a substantial amount of dampening, but it may be more the brass plate itself given that I don't have any experience with other brass plates -- brass is far denser than aluminum and softer than steel which would explain things. It's a sort of hybrid between a top-mounted plate with no support in the center of the board and tray-mounted rigidity on the edges where the plate is pressed onto the bottom half of the case. I would welcome the opportunity to compare an aluminum plate to the brass one, but for my second plate I opted for a partial polycarbonate which I don't think will offer a fair comparison (though I'm quite excited for the juxtaposition of PCB-mounted switches to the heft of the case).
I'm really surprised at the heft of the board. It's incredibly solid, the board even with an all-aluminum construction feels nearly as heavy as my F107. I'm glad I went with the aluminum mid-layer, I think brass would have been too much for me to lug to work and back, though it surely would have looked extremely nice
)
My only critique is that the seam on the left-hand side of the mid-layer/weight is about 0.5mm off (sticks out) but aside from that everything is totally flush, it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
The board is a bit higher in the front than other boards I'm used to, as well as a slightly steeper angle (9.5deg if I recall correctly) but it matches the overall styling of the board extremely well. The board looks elegant from afar, but up close it has great no-nonsense desk presence. The top profile of the board isn't flashy in all of the ways I was looking for. No logos, lights, diffusers. Just a nice, flat block of finely anodized aluminum.
Did I mention the navy color is fantastic?
All in all a phenomenal board, riot you should be very happy with what you've created. My hat's off to your design and manufacturer. It was a truly well run buy.
Keycult No.1 by
josh, on Flickr
Keycult No.1 by
josh, on Flickr
Keycult No.1 by
josh, on Flickr
Keycult No.1 by
josh, on Flickr
Please excuse the partially-seated right Shift, it just wasn't pushed down on the right stab all the way XD