The Blaine V2: SE
BackgroundThe Blaine V2: SE was born out of an “Omakase” keyboard private group buy I ran in the New England Keyboard Discord in 2024. Omakase means “I leave it up to you” - and the 10 people who joined the group buy knew almost nothing about the board when purchasing. When I first talked about the idea, a bunch of people said they would join if I used the F12 Jane TKL plate - so that’s what I did. Note that this was not my original idea - and that one is still cooking.
The resulting keyboard was the Blaine V1: Cinnabar Edition - which you can see here:
It does look pretty similar to another keyboard that also uses the F12 Jane plate - but still keeps its own flair.
InspirationFor the V1 of this board, I decided to draw on some inspiration from my childhood - my first playthrough of Pokemon Blue in 1996.
I’ll never forget almost blacking out in Seafoam Islands - my Pokemon all at low HP from an encounter trying to catch this weird ice bird that was just hanging out there. Surfing to Cinnabar Island after making it through Seafoam Islands was such a relief.
Cinnabar Island was a huge unlock - not only could you finally revive your fossils, there was a gym as well as a weird Pokemon mansion, where (1996 spoiler alert) they allegedly created Mewtwo. Not to mention - Cinnabar Island was my favorite surfing spot to battle level 150 Snorlaxes and MissingNos and clone rare candies. For such a small area, it sure packed a punch!
But a volcano exploded destroying Cinnabar Island by the time Gold/Silver came around, and Blaine moved to Seafoam Islands, hence - the name - Blaine V2: Seafoam Edition.
Exterior / Design Decisions:There are undoubtedly some callbacks here to another F12 TKL that uses a Jane plate. It’s a very distinctive look that I think a lot of people find appealing. And it’s very expensive to get boards with this sort of look on the aftermarket. I think it’s great to make this sort of design a bit more accessible.
With that in mind - there are some pretty key differences. On the back of the board, we find a brass volcano, POM lava, and Smoke PC ash cloud - representing the volcano that pushed Blaine to the Seafoam Islands. There’s also a BLAINE name badge, in the corner of the back. And there’s a removable magnetically attached back accent, and carbon fiber bottom accent.
The PCB has LEDs aligned on top of the POM lava. I’ve always wanted to make something glow like the Apple logo on older Macbook Pros - this method worked out really well, and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. The LEDs are controllable via VIA and are RGB - so if you want blue lava or purple lava, only your imagination is stopping you.
The top of the board is relatively clean.
The board can use both an integrated USB port PCB, or a Fly DB. The V1 didn’t have this - but feedback from V1 participants showed me that this was possible, so now I’ve done it in V2.
Mounting:Top mount + single sided gasket mount + o ring mount are available.
Top mount is pretty straight forward.
With a single-sided gasket mount, the adhesive gaskets fit to the bottom case. You’ll have to be careful to align the plate properly using this mount.
For the o-ring mount, you need to add the 1.5mm sticky silicone spacers on top of the existing o-ring posts. This is because the posts were too tall for EC if they were sized for MX, so the spacers are required for O-ring mounting MX.
My personal preference is single-sided gasket mount, followed by top mount, followed by o-ring mount.
Other Internals:There’s a brass weight on the inside only, to help with acoustics and also give it some of that premium weight feeling. If you build flexy and bottom out, you can remove this weight and you won’t bottom out anymore. Or you can add foam / esd sheets. In my testing, it took 2800g+ of force with the most flexy mounting style (single sided gasket) and an FR4 plate to get a hotswap Bastion PCB w/ 7U Bottom Row to bottom out and short a column. A solderable PCB, or a different TKL PCB might require more or less force.
This should also support EC, given the proper PCB. I designed around Cipulot’s 3d models for the EC TKL X.
The brass weight can either include the volcano LED cutout, or not. If you prefer to have the most consistent acoustics, you can get the flat brass weight with no cutout. If you like the visual flair of the glowing POM lava - get the brass weight with LED cutout.
Colors:We’re not set on colors - but these are some ideas we have. Given the environment, I think we’ll have 4 colorways total. Remember that the carbon fiber on the bottom is always going to be black, and the volcano is going to be brass by default.
These three are colorways that I think fit the theme and I want to run:
Volcano: Dark Gray Top and Bottom + Orange Back Accent
Seafoam: Seafoam Green Top, Black Bottom, Seafoam Green Back Accent
Classic: Black Top, Black Bottom, Red Back Accent
And we’ll try to pick one of these based on demand:
Piano: E-White Top, E-White bottom, Black back accent
Cute: Pink top, Pink Bottom, Lilac back accent
E-Yellow: E-Yellow top, E-White Bottom, Red back accent
And feel free to make up your own colorways too! If one seems really great, we might just use that instead.
The Blaine V1: CE had an awesome e-beige and orange colorway, based on Blaine’s Arcanine. We’re not planning on bringing that back since I want the V1s to be extra special - though, if there is enough public demand, we may consider something similar.
Pricing and Timeline:Based on the quote we received when we bought the Blaine V2 prototype - we should have been able to price this keyboard at $350. Unfortunately, prices seem to have gone up since then - and I think sub $400 is probably more realistic. Based on what you’d be getting, I think it’s still pretty good value. I’ve been daily driving my V1 recently and really enjoy using it.
This board is ready to go - with the mounting having been extensively tested by Omakase participants in V1, we’re really confident in the board. The visual updates for V2 landed well, in my opinion.
We’re ICing today - and we could run the group buy for this board as early as Late June/July.
Please give us all your feedback ASAP so that we can plan out the group buy!
