Hey intelli, great video! The dental bands really do sound great, going to have to look into getting some myself and giving it a shot. I also want to try out the soft landing pads too actually. I assume the soft pads reduce the travel quite a lot more than the dental bands?
Glad you liked it
It depends on how thick the dental bands are, and whether or not you iron the soft pads. When I did the pads, I ironed them down to <0.5mm, and I think the dental bands are about the same thickness. If you get your material that thin, the travel isn't really an issue, IMO. Barely perceptible. Since both materials were about the same thickness in my case, the travel reduction was approximately the same.
Indeed lubing doesn't change the whistle, I lubed my Type-S with that GH 'thick formula' krytox GPL206/VPF1506 mix on the slider rails and nothing changed. I haven't tried lubing the actual stems though as I saw a few people suggest, I came to the conclusion that the general consensus to lube HHKB's was to just lube the slider rails only, so I did that.
You mentioned that you took the board apart and tested the whistle, did you try the board without the rings installed? I have been wondering if without the rings they don't whistle. The keys definitely feel 'tighter' on the board on the type-s than the regular HHKB, I assume because of the rings, but that could be completely wrong.
I did not. I am attempting to exchange the board at EK (they were initially very responsive about an exchange, and now I haven't heard from them in about 5 days... not sure what the problem is) so I didn't want to tear it apart. They suggested checking to see if the PCB was screwed down too tight, compressing the domes, and told me that opening the board wouldn't void the warranty. I tried that with no luck, then took the PCB off to test the parts independently, with results as stated above. But that's as far as I went. Didn't take out teh pads.
It is indeed very irritating and whilst I love the thock of the stock HHKB I have grew accustom to the lovely sound of silenced thorpe.
I have been through it all in your previous post, but it does seem that it's a very common problem in more recent type-s boards.
It really is annoying. I usually pooh-pooh complaints about keyboard tolerances -- $200 is a lot for a keyboard but it sure doesn't buy perfection -- but for a keyboard that costs an extra $100
specifically to be silent, it had better actually be silent! I really don't know what the issue is, but PFU needs to fix it. Ripster posted that it's the Topre "fart," but I'm not convinced it's the same thing. If it is, something about the Type-S is making it sound like an annoying whistle instead of a pleasant pneumatic whoosh.