Nice, looks clean OP! About time someone else did a symmetrical WKL 65 too! I thought it would be a dominant form factor after how popular the Bauer was, but for whatever reason it didn't become one. I would love to see a Cherry styled lip on this, I think it would help break up the boxy look a little bit. Also curious to hear the sound test from the proto. The leaf spring design of the plate worries me a bit with the spacebar switch & stab cutouts being much closer to the bottom left side mounting tab than the right side. Which might negatively affect the sound of the spacebar. Hopefully it doesn't, but IME building KBs that type of setup usually makes for a weaker sounding space. Anyways GL with the proto OP, I'll be keeping an eye on this one! Been a hot min since a 65% interested me & this one definitely caught my eye.
Thank you so much for the kind words. The symmetrical WKL 65% is my favorite layout, so maybe I'm a bit ignorant for that reason, but I'm also surprised that its not more popular than it is. I would like to do a model with a cherry lip design to see how it looks. My biggest concern about making the front with a cherry lip, is that the stance of the keyboard, with the straight 90 degree angle from the front against the angled rear, might not be as severe, but that's just me ranting. I would love to try it out, I might just end up being proven wrong. As for the plate design, I have also had some bad experiences with mounting points around the spacebar switch/stabilizer area. My theory (don't take anything i say as the absolute truth lol) is that because this mounting style has less pressure on one point as well as being spaced out a fair bit from the main portion of the plate, compared to something like a traditional top mounted plate, it wont cripple the sound in the same way. Either way, We will find out with the new prototype. I'll probably also find a bunch of other small things to improve as well. I will be posting a sound test of the prototype here if it lives up to my expectations and i get the sound i want out of it. I wont be doing an EC sound test right away, as I'm just going to be using a spare MX PCB I have, that supports the layout.
Once again, thank you so much for both the kind words and the feedback, its super helpful to hear from other people with their own experience