So i've located a g81-1800 in black. Its the model where the spacebar is 'long' and it has four 'short' keys to the right of the space bar (alt, win, and 2 others).
two questions:
1) presumably it has black (ie, MY) switches. Will I be able to simply transfer keycaps from it onto blue switches?
2) as far as swapping out the pcb from a g80-1800, the profiles are obviousy very close, but they wont be perfect. I'll be using the pcb from a qtronix kt-305 which has the 'short' space bar and different styled keys to the right of the space bar. So here the question is, will I be able to squish the black 'longer' spacebar from the g81 onto this? Probably not...
in other words, pcb swap might work BUT it would leave me with 5 keys that are white (ie, unswappable keycaps) on a keyboard that will be otherwise all black.
basically, i have not yet seen g80/g81 with exact same keycap profile (let alone at reasonable prices (under $50 used)).
I suppose a second option is to do what karlito did with his hhkb and unsolder the black keys out and solder the blue keys in. Ugh.
Too bad a stem-swap is out of the question between MY and MX keys.