During GH’s recent downtime, I did some browsing over at deskthority.net. I had been looking at silencing my Topre boards for some time and was curious if there were any threads over there relating to the subject. As my luck would have it Hypersphere had started a thread detailing his efforts to replicate the o-rings from an HHKB Type-S and silent RF boards using the help of a manufacturer. This seemed far more appealing that the dental band mod, the ironed out EK landing pads, or punching out my own rings.
The rings arrived Saturday and I've spent the last couple of days installing them on a NovaTouch and a RF 87U 55gm. Modding those two boards is the first time I’ve ever cracked any keyboard open. The whole process was a little more labor intensive than expected, but it was interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two.
First of all, the RF case is child’s play to open compared to the NT. Seriously. Disengaging those clips on the NT is unnecessarily hard. I guess it does speak to the fit and finish of the product. All those seams are tight!
When it comes to the plate and the PCB, things are almost identical. Unsurprising given both PCBs are manufactured by the same company.
Things get way more interesting when it comes to the switch housings and sliders. Both the RF and NT have their switch housings labeled. The NT’s housings are numbered 6 though 11 (I think), while the RF uses letters. I have no idea what either means, and all the housings seem randomly distributed through the board. Furthermore, the housing and slider orientation therein seemed random through the board. When adding the rings I tried to keep everything oriented as I found it, but I can’t imagine it matters. If anyone has any more info on this, I’d love to know more. Especially if said info is “it makes no difference, don’t worry about it.”
Another interesting difference is that the RF seemed to have a very light grease coating on the sliders, where the NT didn’t appear to.
Sadly, the left control key slider on the RF doesn’t have a base like the other sliders, making the ring not function as intended. Without the base, the ring bends and the slider gets stuck in the housing.
The overall results are fantastic. I can’t recommend this enough. As far as feel is concerned between the two, I’m leaning heavily towards the NT. This poses somewhat of a dilemma as I also have a uniform 45gm EK edition board. At this point it looks like I’ll be transferring the rings from the 55gm board to the 45gm board to test that out. I wouldn’t be all that surprised if I ended up with two NT’s after this is all said and done.
For reference, I’m using IMSTO caps with NT bundled o-rings on the NT, while the RF has the stock caps on it.
Below is a recording of the silenced NT. I’m terrible at this. Not only did I not take any pictures, I’m also recording the keyboard using the Voice Memos app on my phone. Apologies.
silencedNT.m4a (159.34 kB - downloaded 131 times.)
P.S. I wasn't sure how long it was going to take Hypersphere to get a ring he was satisfied with, so I did some hunting of my own to find a suitable material to punch rings out of. I ordered some 0.5mm Hareline micro foam from a fly fishing store which seems like it might work nicely. Not sure I'll ever get to testing it out, but here are a couple of shots of one of the foam sheets compared to one of the rings from Hypersphere.
