They are mx, not even topre. Does the $200+ difference justify the quality of the korean custom keyboards opposed to a qfr or filco? I would really like to know what custom keyboards offer that a standard mechanical keyboard does not.
I can’t answer for anyone else, and I have no interest in or experience with custom Korean keyboards, but personally, I plan to make my own custom keyboard, which has so far involved:
* Buying about $300 of old used keyboards from ebay to test various switches and figure out which kind I like. I expect I can make back $200-400 selling these back, either the way I got them but cleaned, or in various recombinations [one type of switch in another case, or just as separate switches/keycaps, etc.]. So this is hardly a huge monetary loss, though it is a temporary investment. (Well, plus ~$250 on an Ergodox + caps, which I’ll also probably sell.)
* Hopefully soon paying for a TechShop membership and several courses on how to use equipment for cutting/machining whatever material I’ll make the case/plate out of, currently it looks like this will be wood, but I need to do some more work and research.
* Buying equipment for doing electronics work, and learning enough about basic electronics to wire some stuff together. I plan to put this to use on projects beyond just making keyboards, afterwards.
* Buying the materials to make the new keyboard, such as wood/metal, electronic components, etc.
* A few hundred hours doing research, building prototypes, playing with switch modifications, talking to people about ideas, etc., and then a bunch more time to actually physically make the final product. I might screw it up a few times along the way, so factor that in.
* A bunch of time spent learning enough about writing low-level C code to make custom keyboard firmware [this is still mostly in the future; so far I’ve stuck to modifying existing code]. This will probably end up totaling at least a hundred hours more before it works satisfactorily, or perhaps several times as long.
So is any of this worth it? Well, for one thing, most of it is a learning experience, and learning little bits about electronics, mechanical design of keyswitches, anatomy of the hand, keyboard firmware design, etc. is practice that can later be applied to other projects and topics. Not to mention, the learning is, in and of itself, intellectually gratifying.
But really, the reason I think it’s worth it is that as a writer, photographer, computer programmer, cartographer, user interface designer, etc., some type of computer (whether that’s a tablet or a PC or whatever) is one of the most important tools used in all of my work, on a daily basis. And a keyboard is the primary input device with which I interact with computers.
Having control over the physical properties of the input device is a huge advantage in flexibility and efficiency; it’s possible to adapt the computer to my own needs, instead of relying on someone else’s design which may or may not be relevant for my tasks. Not only that, but a custom layout and nice keyswitches makes typing faster, more pleasant, and less stressful on the body. Having a nice workstation with a big high-resolution display and nice input devices makes it easier to sit down and work, instead of getting distracted by books or online news articles.
You might ask why a photographer buys nice camera equipment, a tennis player buys a nice racket, or a lawyer buys a nice suit.
