I'm looking at early feedback from this first week, and there are some trends emerging. While the base, numpad, and bars are all popular, the novelties are proving very popular - enough that I think it's worth turning the Extension/Novelty kit into a pure novelty kit, that has a better chance of selling out completely.

To do this, some of the extension keys can be moved to the base, while others will need to be dropped.

Going by people's answers to what coverage is most critical to them, the UK keys can be dropped - not a single respondent has said they need those. Stepped Control, R3/R4 Page Up/Down, and 2u Shift should make the jump to base, as a decent number of people have said those are necessary. HHKB bottom row mods can be dropped due to lack of demand, although I'll keep the 6u bar in the bars kit, and there are 1.5u and 1u R3 novelties.

Interest in the alert row kit is lagging far behind all the others, and it would be dropped. While potential cadet alphas have gotten some feedback support, none of the proposed additional kits has enough support to warrant adding them.

A dedicated novelties kit can have a few more keys in it since the extension keys would be stripped out. I added 108-key coverage, and more row variants of the 1u novelties. You could physically cover XT columns with novelties, although I know that's not perfect.

The resulting revised kitting would look something like this. The 1.75u Enter and 1u Backspace for extended 40s support in the base could be dropped if needed to help with pricing, but the base is on par with most SA bases of the last six years.

Proposed base:


Proposed numpad:


Proposed spacebars:


Proposed novelties/accents:


I'm trying to keep the kit count as minimal as possible for the sake of vendors not being stuck with dead stock, so I don't envision being able to add any further kits to this. Part of me wonders if the numpad and/or bars interest merits merging them into the base to prevent orphaning, while the novelties seem so popular that I don't see them lingering on shelves.

Quote from: VXQN on Wed, 07 January 2026, 03:17:27

Quote from: FoxandFoundry on Tue, 06 January 2026, 22:29:09

Sorry but there's just way too much eye-strain inducing contrast. That bright green on beige is eye-searing along with the grey on pink for Backspace and on Enter. While it may be a interesting novelty at first glance, sets like this just don't work for day to day use.

Whilst I understand where you're coming from, sets like GMK Flare and GMK Hilight exist, as do generic blanks and GMK Cosmos, so I think this is still very much a "valid" design. Also the real life color contrasts will probably be softer on the eye due to general differences between (emissive) renders and (reflective) real life.

I will say for sets like this getting physical samples, if possible, is definitely something that can be very useful. I didn't see any colors listed - but I could have missed them

For sets like this with bright/highlighter colors, and certain pastel colors, it can be really hard to judge how the final outcome will look just from renders as the different lighting will make such a difference.

I have the color samples. As they are the exact same color as Windbreaker - which GMK is running now, there is no issues with the colors at all. The renders were directly matched to the original pantones which is what GMK used to make the samples.

Thanks for  information

that would also be a good opportunity to fix the main issues (i write this comment from my optica60):
* case ping due to tilted hidden screw design which makes near impossible to do a good force break
* use a reasonable bootloader for STM32F103, or a chip with a reasonable locked bootloader
* provide qmk configuration, or at least a schematics/pinout

after connecting a debugger by soldering on leads and flashing a decent bootloader, following the traces by hand and making my own qmk configuration (for gui-free, plaintext configuration of the keymaps) i am quite happy with the board.

TLDR: while the last two points are probably not an issue for most, i would recommend to lookout for the case ping in case of a rerun.

It's 2026. I think it's time for a round 2.