Author Topic: How did you guys get into keyboards? (Read 3365 times)

FrostyToast · « **on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 00:16:04 »

I remember that the reason why I got into mechanical keyboards was because I watched a bunch of LinusTechTips videos and one of them featured a mechanical keyboard. I then bought my first board which was the Corsair K90.
I also remember that I found GeekHack through LinusTechTips as well. One of his videos at I think CES(?) showed off the Ducky Mini and as soon as I looked up "60% keyboard" I found this beautiful site.
So the lesson that should be learned here is that I hate Linus because now I'm almost $1000 deep into this insane hobby that almost no one understands.

)

compgeke · « **Reply #1 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 00:56:10 »

I found a guy on another forum giving away a metric ****ton of old computers and parts and such, but I had to take the keyboards. All of them. I was told to join deskthority by a couple members from there who I talk to elsewhere but also joined here because why the hell not?

In the end I now still have all those keyboards sans a couple Model Ms I gave out and a couple Model Fs I traded. I've also acquired a Desko with blacks, Rosewill RK9000 with reds (and a black petal controller and 50A O-rings added on), Typewriter with Marquardt switches, keyboard with clicky white Alps switches, an Apple AEK II with cream switches and a couple more I'm probably forgetting.

In the end I've still only spent about $80 on all the keyboards I own.

Beca · « **Reply #2 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 01:02:38 »

tbh i don't even remember. it was about 2 summers ago that I first found out about them. not sure where or how i did tbh o.o...

suby4me · « **Reply #3 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 01:06:38 »

My old college roommate was into Das keyboards and he kept telling me how awesome they were to type on. I eventually decided to try a board and was satisfied for a while with a blackwidow. Then I stumbled upon this place and that opened my eyes even more. I got to see how far the rabbit hole went

baldgye · « **Reply #4 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 01:31:57 »

A mate of mine bought a mech board and I got hella jelly so spent about 2-3 months researching which brand would be best to go with and which switches I would like the most. Ended up going with a full size filco with blues.

Frenir · « **Reply #5 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 02:16:39 »

I saw Linus do a review of the Filco Majestouch Ninja and I decided that I had to own one.

It has gone downhill ever since.

Oobly · « **Reply #6 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 05:17:41 »

Quote from: compgeke on Wed, 18 June 2014, 00:56:10

...

In the end I've still only spent about $80 on all the keyboards I own.

Very impressive! I don't understand how you could possibly have been a member here very long then.

I've spent more than that on a single set of keycaps... But don't tell my wife.

I always liked smaller boards, but didn't know much about mechanical keyboards. I got irritated with how my Roccat Arvo felt (really spongy and just.... wrong) and wanted something with better switches, so I started reading up on the interwebs... discovered GH, bought a Ducky, made an ergo board and it now my wallet keeps getting sucked dry every month because people like Ivan start GB's for keycaps that I just HAVE to own.

Kayla · « **Reply #7 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 05:33:12 »

I crawled into my keyboard and I didnt fit. Ive never been able to get into it.

paicrai · « **Reply #8 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 05:55:41 »

vun

thx bro

vivalarevolución · « **Reply #9 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 06:43:07 »

I heard that women love guys that know their keyboards. And here I am.

Computer-Lab in Basement · « **Reply #10 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 07:10:05 »

I came here. It was five years ago today. The rest is history.

CPTBadAss · « **Reply #11 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 07:16:10 »

Like....2011? I was introduced to professional StarCraft2 and TeamLiquid. I watched streams constantly and most streamers had Razer or Steelseries as a sponsor. So the streamers would have tons of click clacking on their streams which intrigued me. At the same time, I was writing a blog on TeamLiquid and I figured it would be nice to have a proper tool if I was spending hours typing up blog posts. So after months of waiting and "researching" (I somehow never stumbled on DT or GH or /r/mech

), I bought a cheap Razer Blackwidow. Spent a year typing on that until I tried a friend's Filcos at MLG Providence. Doing research on the Filcos led me to GH. Then I spammed the **** out of GH and bought many boards

vun · « **Reply #12 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 07:28:25 »

I was gonna get a new keyboard since I'd had my current one for like 5+ years, and I'd heard something about mechanical keyboards. I figured I could at least look into it, and my research led me here. And then I found out that mice were more interesting.

SpAmRaY · « **Reply #13 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 08:08:16 »

A guy at notebookreview forum had a poker X with blank caps (maybe he's a member here....never thought to check) and that first caught my eye then about the same time my old scissor switch keyboard started flaking out on me then I bought a mechanical board and was confused by the sprue marks and found this place....

strict · « **Reply #14 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 12:32:13 »

The ****ty HP rubber dome board I was using at work died and our PC dept. gave me a Dell KB113P rubber dome to replace it. The built in riser on the bottom of the case kept the keyboard on a permanent slant that had my wrists aching after 20 minutes. I started looking at finding a nice, high quality replacement and just happened to stumble on GeekHack.

dustinhxc · « **Reply #15 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 12:48:43 »

Very good idea for a topic! I was sick of my super-flat, ****ty hp wireless scissor-switch board so I looked up the top 10 keyboards and they were all mechanical which I knew nothing about. I liked the look of the Rosewill and it reminded me of Roswill so I got that from Newegg. I loved it for a month but then I Found Geekhack through a link and then the spending never stopped!

hashbaz · « **Reply #16 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 13:02:03 »

I used a Kinesis Advantage for several years at work because I loved the feel/sound and the flashy blue home row keys. I didn't "get into keyboards" though until I started following the SC2 pro scene. I googled for info on dyeing keycaps to try to get the classic checkerboard look without buying two boards, and found geekhack. I was hooked instantly and researched obsessively for a few weeks before buying a Filco with blues and entering a couple of group buys.

Three years and many hundreds of dollars later, I'm still here.

FrostyToast · « **Reply #17 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 14:56:10 »

Quote from: Kayla on Wed, 18 June 2014, 05:33:12

I crawled into my keyboard and I didnt fit. Ive never been able to get into it.

Funny you should say that. I have really gotten into 60% boards but I can't seem to quite get into 100% or even 75% boards. I may have broken physics or something.

hwood34 · « **Reply #18 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 14:59:43 »

My friend first told me about mechs about a year ago. He still only has his corsair k70, and I have hundreds invested into keyboards and keycaps.

exitfire401 · « **Reply #19 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 15:00:41 »

I wanted something new to tinker with. After re-building my desktop, I came across the subreddit and started lurking here. It has definitely met my needs for a new hobby, and I've made some awesome friends here because of it

Sifo · « **Reply #20 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 15:31:41 »

Starcraft and the dt35

StylinGreymon · « **Reply #21 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 15:37:09 »

I saw a 3D render of DSA Retro and fell in love.
A bit of light Googling later, and I found this place, just in time to completely miss the groupbuy.

Signature · « **Reply #22 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 15:46:10 »

Somebody told me you had to get a mechanical keyboard to be a pro-gamer. Found a Swedish guy called huttala that mod his keyboard and I got hooked! Still just gold 3 on LoL

noisyturtle · « **Reply #23 on:** Wed, 18 June 2014, 19:31:03 »

One day I figured, "If I'm going to be spending at least 10hrs a day using a keyboard for the rest of my life, I better get a nice one."

And so it began....

davkol · « **Reply #24 on:** Thu, 19 June 2014, 07:50:13 »

It was around 2010 and I just wanted a cheap, but quality scissor-switch keyboard in ANSI. Like Logitech UltraX, but they were impossible to get locally and nothing else really worked for me, because of a cramped F-row, bad build quality or some non-ANSI layout. I was getting frustrated by my poor touch typing technique too.

Eventually, I switched to Colemak and started to collect old keyboards, because I heard they were good quality (and some were great indeed)—GH (and DT) was a great resource for identifying them. I didn't really use them much though, due to my growing interest in going deeper, i.e. into better layouts, both physical and logical...

...and here I am, typing on a typematrix, with a disassembled ergodox next to me and carpalx running in the background.

madhias · « **Reply #25 on:** Thu, 19 June 2014, 08:24:29 »

It was a cold winter day in December not long ago.

I was on a walk with the dog at the frozen danube river. The low-lying sun made a great light, and we made a rest at a seat bench. I got bored and took the smartphone and instantly i thought i need one of these gamer keyboards. There was nothing else i needed for the PC. A view minutes later i compared different available keyboards, and found almost all of the gamer keyboards ugly. I discovered the brand Filco. I went home and ordered a TKL Filco with MX Blues.

Half a year later, i'm addicted and it seems to be the only hobby aside photography! Now i have a Filco TKL, a Ducky TKL, a SSK, a G80-11800, some novelty caps, and other stuff like switches, custom controllers, etc. There are many projects to be be done in the next months!

Puddsy · « **Reply #26 on:** Thu, 19 June 2014, 12:50:36 »

"wtf is this, /r/buildapc is high, but if it's really that good I'll try it"

received keyboard

"this is awesome"

3 years later I'm here with 11 keyboards

Frenir · « **Reply #27 on:** Thu, 19 June 2014, 13:00:15 »

Quote from: madhias on Thu, 19 June 2014, 08:24:29

It was a cold winter day in December not long ago.

I was on a walk with the dog at the frozen danube river. The low-lying sun made a great light, and we made a rest at a seat bench. I got bored and took the smartphone and instantly i thought i need one of these gamer keyboards. There was nothing else i needed for the PC. A view minutes later i compared different available keyboards, and found almost all of the gamer keyboards ugly. I discovered the brand Filco. I went home and ordered a TKL Filco with MX Blues.

Half a year later, i'm addicted and it seems to be the only hobby aside photography! Now i have a Filco TKL, a Ducky TKL, a SSK, a G80-11800, some novelty caps, and other stuff like switches, custom controllers, etc. There are many projects to be be done in the next months!

How romantic.

FrostyToast · « **Reply #28 on:** Thu, 19 June 2014, 13:13:11 »

I would just like to let you know that even though I have gotten super into keyboards I am typing on a flipped Num0 key...
Basically, I don't have a single standard keycap set and when I got a standard keyboard, ironically I didn't have a spacebar that fit it...
So if you're wondering why I chose to type up my last 50ish posts on something potentially worse than an SP knifebar, I only have one thing to say for myself:
Lubed and stickered clears...

Smasher816 · « **Reply #29 on:** Thu, 19 June 2014, 23:14:49 »

I saw a person on Google+ (yes, some people actually use it occasionally) upgrade from a G15 to Das. I also had a G15 and thought, "hmmmm it would be cool to have a blank keyboard. He seems to like how it feels, maybe I will try it out". Ended up picking up a WASD v2 with mostly blank keycaps and some binary function keys. Now that I have my HHKB with some nice PBT keycaps I can see how crappy the WASD ABS ones are. I'm still holding onto the wasd and planning on swapping it out for clears and using it at work.

CK Briefs · « **Reply #30 on:** Fri, 20 June 2014, 03:39:10 »

Eh, I just casually researched keyboards when I was looking for a new one, and saw the QFR like 3 years ago.

Took me a while to finally get around to buying it, though

And the rest is history

FrostyToast · « **Reply #31 on:** Fri, 20 June 2014, 15:02:32 »

Question to mods:
Do you think that we could have a thread like this pinned up in the New Members subforum so that the new guys could tell us their stories?
I see that we get approximately one new thread on that subforum every day.
And obviously, the new guys can actually remember how they got into keyboards, unlike all of you senile oldies!

Dubsgalore · « **Reply #32 on:** Fri, 20 June 2014, 15:38:33 »

Was in the process of building my first PC and needed a keyboard to go along with it. I had been doing a ton of research on parts, so when it came to picking a keyboard and mouse at the end, I turned to reddit for suggestions on some beginner gear that I could start with, with what cash I had left. Was suggested a few boards, but picked a DAS because a few people said it was the 'best' option and the blank keycaps were badass. Picked mx browns because they were 'more quiet'.

Honestly didn't think much of the DAS when I got it, felt nice but I hated the blank keys at first (so happy I stuck with it, it taught me to touch type completely and type fast). Started to look for a single custom cap I could put on my ESC, which lead me to r/mechanicalkeyboards. Read and tried to learn everything there was to, and after hearing all of Ripster's anti-geekhack stuff, I decided to go check it all out. Was super uncomfortable with the 'forum' layout as it had been my first ever, but I stuck with it and really happy that I did.

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Author Topic: How did you guys get into keyboards? (Read 3365 times)