geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboard Keycaps => Topic started by: Crabby on Fri, 05 February 2021, 18:12:49
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Working on my custom keyboard over the next few months and I've been looking at my options for keycap profiles. All I can say is that I absolutely hate OEM profile, they are too tall for my liking, so I'd prefer something much lower profile if possible. I've heard Devlin Q/QS are the lowest profile keycaps you can get but it doesn't look like they're obtainable anymore. I know cherry profile is a bit lower profile but GMK sets are, to put it bluntly, quite a bit out of my price range, especially since I'm doing a 120 key keyboard.
Any suggestions? :)
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DSA is fairly short if you don't mind uniform keycaps. You might also consider DCS if you're looking for sculpted.
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Before keycaps like GMK and EnjoyPBT were available, I used to collect Cherry-profile keycaps off used Cherry keyboards: both ones with Cherry MX switches (keyboards in G80 series) and with Cherry MY switches (Cherry G81 series). There are some caveats though: Cherry has a few conventions that other manufacturers don't adhere to - especially with the G81 series. The colour and legend options are also a bit limited: most being laser-etched thin PBT.
The Cherry article numbers (https://deskthority.net/wiki/Cherry_article_numbers) article on the Deskthority Wiki was a great help in finding the good ones.
I live in Europe and prefer a layout that is somewhat close to German, and because Cherry is German there were lots of suitable donor keyboards available for me on German eBay for somewhat good prices. After the explosion of the hobby, prices have gone up though.