Hello! Total newbie here.

[Zethia]

Hi! It’s good to find a place like this. I stumbled in here after lurking around reddit for a while; found a link there to a neat looking GMK mockup and thought I may as well stick around. I’m completely new to mechanical keyboards and have never owned one before. I’ve got my first one coming this week for my birthday thanks to my patient wife who has NO IDEA what kind of fire she’s just lit.

The one on the way is the Drop CTRL with Halo Trues, and she also got me a set of cotton candy pudding Matrix Keycaps. From what I’ve learned on Reddit so far, I’ve made horrible choices, have horrible taste and I should be very ashamed of myself. The internet is fun! Despite this, I’m looking forward to exploring, learning, and working my way up from buying RGB filled garbage to eventually soldering my own boards. I’m still trying to get a feel for what kinds of switches I may like, and I hope I can get ahold of a tester kit before long. I’m very susceptible to wanting whatever people say is the “best” of whatever hobby I get into, so I’m trying to actually feel these things instead of giving into the urge to make Holy Pandas or pay a bunch for Zealios before I even know if I like them or not.

I’d better shut up now. I’ve spent hours already tonight refreshing r/mechmarket trying to find my first artisan and have avoided spending anything. Gotta quit while I’m ahead. I look forward to exploring this weird new world! Maybe someday I’ll even join a group buy! RIP, disposable income...

[Maledicted]

Hi Zethia. Welcome to Geekhack.

That CTRL seems extremely popular, and I have been tempted by it myself. I'm a clicky guy, so I've got no experience, or opinion, on boutique tactiles. I don't think anybody started with exactly what they'll eventually end up with, and I frame it exactly like that on purpose. For modern switches, I love Kailh box jades and navies. I used to be perfectly content with MX blues, and now I think they're terrible by comparison. When Silo beam springs come out, I may jump ship once more to those, and I may even still find some less common box switch variants that I end up preferring, etc, etc. The important thing is that you took the dive, and you'll figure out what you like as you go.

I also wouldn't let people put you down for buying an OEM board. I don't personally think anybody who just assembles LEGO boards from parts has a leg to stand on in disparaging those who have not. Literally anybody could do it with a cheap Weller iron and a bare minimum of watching decent soldering tutorials. RGB is personal preference as well. You may get the occasional bad*** that shows off the fact that he's got no legends on his keyboard, etc, but I have never seen it here. I think it is pretty well accepted that some people are phenomenal typists, regardless of their typing style, and RGB is otherwise personal taste anyway, even for touch typists like myself.

I haven't seen anybody be elitist about it here, although I do think that sometimes it is assumed that they are when they say things like how soldered switches are more reliable than ones in hot swap sockets. I can't say I have run into a single person who means it that way though. You be you.

[funkmon]

Well there is that thread about Topre being the single true keyswitch and all of the other ones are crap, but by and large, yeah. Geekhack seems to be fairly cool about it, with a great mix of people.

It seems we've got a solid cross section of what I consider to be normal mechanical keyboard owners, that is, people primarily with modern prebuilt boards and a few older ones, vintage keyboardists with like a dozen old keyboards and an occasional modern one, and custom keyboardists, with a lot of build-your-own things and their own switches, plus an occasional modern and vintage keyboard.

I have no custom keyboards, per say, but did apprehend one with hot swappable switches to try out those Box Navys everyone's talking about.

I normally type on a Unicomp Model M. Arguably both a vintage and modern board.

And nobody really cares what you like or do here, but expect more, like, actual keyboard **** than on Reddit, which appears to be largely comprised of images of anime themed keycaps and stuff like that.