Couple weeks ago I purchased my a Novatouch TKL. It was my first Topre board, and I loved the smoothness and tactile feel. However, I felt the upstroke was very noisy, so I decided to try out a silencing mod.
Following Spicebar's mod, I managed to silence all the keys (
except spacebar), and reduce rattle on the stabilized keys. I used the EK soft landing pads which were flattened (
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=65821.msg1540860#msg1540860), and lubed the stabilizers using EK thick silicone grease.
There was a significant sound reduction, with little or no change in the feeling of the keys.
The spacebar still clacks quite a bit despite having a soft landing pad installed. Sound Samples: The recordings using a portable recorder approximately 6 inches in front of the KB. The sounds in real life is much quieter.
Before silencing:
https://clyp.it/ojndkrihAfter silencing:
https://clyp.it/1h2camtzPictures: I didn't snap pictures of the internals, but did show the ironed landing pads.
http://imgur.com/a/5LPEBThe entire mod took about 5 hours, quite a bit longer than expected. During the whole process the sheet of rubber domes separated from the PCB (there was very little glue holding it in place). Having the plungers facing down, I had to lay the rubber sheet / springs / PCB over and re-assemble the whole keyboard several times. Any small geometric misalignment cause some keys to be non-functional.
I might look into fixing the space bar in the future, but I'm pretty happy with out it turned out. The "thock" is still there, without the noisy "clack". I don't have much experience with Topre keyboards, but I believe the tactile feel was unchanged or only marginally changed. The overall Topre feel seems to be preserved.
The entire mod was most definitely worthwhile for me, as the Novatouch needed some serious silencing.
Update: I dissembled the unit and used a generous amount of EK thick lube on the underside and the area around the spacebar stabilizer inserts. The clack on the spacebar is now completely silenced.
