Hello all!
Been lurking around a bit recently, already joined the #gh IRC-channel (unfortunately I couldn't register as cavey here, as I'm known on IRC most of the time).
Here's my story (in case you're interested, tl;dr: pictures attached at the end.)
I'm very very new to the keyboardist world, let alone the mechanical world. I've had some dealings with mechanical keyboards during my life. Started in the 80's with some IBM AT keyboards from my dad's work. Now all these many years later I'm kicking myself for not having some first dibs on his Model M keyboard when he sold the company and retired.
I grew up on the c64 keyboard, for many years that was my standard. Later on moved to some lowly membranes with my first desktop tower. At some point late 90's a friend introduced me to the Dvorak layout. I switched over to the Lite-On SK2501 (or something like that), with flat profiled keycaps. Hurray for manually swapping them around, without having to deal with the weird curvature. Only to change it back to qwerty again after some years because friends don't know how to touch type.
During the 90's I came into contact with this weird keyboard: BTC-5339. Foam and foil switch. I have it with white switches and cherry mx stems. Hmm, I wonder whether I could transplant them. The keyboard still types (tested 3 years ago), but it has an AT style plug. And haven't used it that much anymore anyway.
Ever since I heard about them, I've been lusting for one: The HHKB. But way out of my price range (or so I thought). Fast forward to present day: I got suckered into the MK world. At first I came across custom keycaps, then I started looking into various switches, then I started looking for information about the BTC keyboard I have lying around, then I started to pine for a buckling spring keyboard accompanied with the afforementioned kicking.
Cherry MX? Topre? HHKB? Membrane? DIY builds? TKL? OMG! So much possibilities.
And then something triggered my gearlust: "CM Novatouch". The HHKB switches, with Cherry MX customizability. Win-win! Now where to find one? Low on funds, there was a shop in the netherlands, but when funds arrived the shop sold out. Only shop available had it at an exorbitant pricelevel (EUR 300+). That's a no-go. Then... I found a post on Deskthority, from someone named CM Bram, novatouch out of production! Final stock arriving at cmstore. And then another webshop had one available for a little bit less then the CM Store. I snatched it up. It arrived last week december 2016. Had about 3 days of typing on it at work before I took it home for the holidays.
Matt3o told me that there was something special about to arrive at PMK when I queried about the Granite set. I slightly went mental.
Anyways, I guess my first keyboard in the MK world is the Novatouch, TOPRE switches. And I've decked it out immediately with HC Granites.
Stock NT:
HC Granite NT:
