People who work with a computer generally for long hours, don’t you get bored of your setups? Simple things like changing the wallpaper, changing the chrome theme, adding a new display plugin, ricing your Unix display, give us some newness, which in turn keeps us going and motivated for a week. Or I choose to believe that’s the common sentiment among us.

Now, this blogpost is about keyboards. Seriously, how many words do you think I can write about keyboards ? Not many? There’s about a million people who disagree.

The backstory – how I got into the rabbithole?

It was the year 2017, I got into a programming club at my university. We had a room to hang out in, with good internet (a lot better than what we got in our dorm rooms). It was closer to the canteens and juice shops, so it was convenient for people to not leave that club room for a full day, if they’re mostly working for the full day.

One evening when I entered the room, there were three people sitted round-table, banging their fingers into their laptops. I think they were Parth, Ranga, and Akshay and they were on typeracer. Names are irrelevant to you, I suppose. But most anecdotes have names, I guess.

I went back home, and tried it myself. I did some 40-45 WPM, not bad for someone starting? I don’t know, Parth was doing 90s, and Akshay - 75s. I wanted to get there, there was no rush, but college was pretty bleak for me, and I did everything I could to pick up distractions, so I can justify my bad grades. Also eventually, I learned that it was called speed-typing.

So whenever I got some time, I started banging my fingers like those three madmen, and wanted to type things really fast, faster then a brain could think. (Watch how I take a boring, boring thing and narrate to you like the Mahabharata)

By the time I was in my final year of college, I could do early 90s as my fastest time on typeracer. I thought I can finally compete with Parth, so I asked him on Twitter, if he still speed-types. He replied “Not so much, I did do a 100+ 10-races running average very recently”. So I realized, it’s not the end, it’s never the end since people do 250+ on QWERTY layout. I wasn’t even halfway there, not even at my best.

Soon I realized that I was constrained by my keyboard. But I had no money to spend on keyboards. I lived very minimally in college, and eventually when the internship at Grofers started, and there was a steady cashflow, I got myself a membrane keyboard from Logitech, I had fun. Since the keyboard in laptop seemed like a pawn compared to the high [travel-distance] I got in the Logitech. Plus the tactility, RGB and all those jargon commonly found in beginners’ “mechanical keyboards” made me feel like it can’t get any better than this. Boy was I wrong!

The rabbithole - and those subreddits

While browsing reddit one day, I found r/MechanicalKeyboards, and thought “Wow, such weird bored people. Spending their time and money on keyboards. Why?!”

I found similar subreddits from Indian communities like r/mkindia and r/ckindia. For some reasons, Discord is very popular among the modern keyboard enthusiasts.

After some weeks, I thought to myself, “Okay, let’s get a ’trial’ board, which we’ll experiment with, and when I’m sure about my taste of components, we’ll build a good better board.” I was never willing to spend more than 3-4k INR on a keyboard. My computer costed me 33k-INR to accquire which I graduated college with, no blipping way I was going to spend half of that amount just for a keyboard(which by the way is very normal for a beginner to do in the keyboard community. :D )

So I bought myself an Epomaker SK-66s. It was discounted because of its weird layout and the switches used (optical) were not compatible with mainstream keyboards in the hobby.

Then I started diving deeper, to find different switches for my SK61.

1. Availability (In stock) is a huge problem in this hobby, but I’d say it might be bugging a lot of niche hobbies. Since demand can’t be predicted easily, production can’t be steady.
2. I couldn’t find switches which would be compatible with my Optical PCB. (It was then when I read about how Optical PCBs work, and how they were cheap and mass-produced but no premium switches were optical.)

There are a few stores in India if you wish you build your own keyboard. Listing some of them down here

1. stackskb.com
2. rectangles.store
3. genesispc.com
4. mechkeys.com

Many prefer the top two against the bottom two. Here are some global stores that are good, and are relatively less attractive to customs.

1. dailyclack.com
2. ilumbkb.com
3. drop.com

I digress, so I ordered a GK61, and a set of Autumn themed XDA keycaps from StacksKB, some Gateron Yellows from Mechkeys, and some accessories from genesispc. I built the keyboard I’m currently typing this page out on. I don’t think I’ll ever let it go. It’s 10 times cheaper than the most luxurious board I own. But there’s something about the first thing you build to enter into a hobby, which sticks, which probably reminds you just how much simple things if built with patience can stay with you for so long.

My typing speeds also improved, not so much in the SK61 because of the weird positioning of the right shift key. Although I stopped using Typeracer because the paragraphs were meaningful, and I got distracted by what they meant, my typing speed was consistently 100+ when I moved to monkeytype.com, the highest being 122WPM.

Nowadays, my monkeytype best scores look like this.

The aftermath and dawn

After my first keyboard, I was hooked. The IMKC(Indian Mechanical Keyboard Community) is a black-hole. It’ll pull you in and suck your interest, money, and time :D . It has a lot of interesting people showcasing and working on different keyboards. I lurked way too much and built some nice keyboards. After the GK61,

1. I got a Tofu65. A tray-mount budget keyboard with brass plate, with a nice sound signature. The keyboard is stiff due to its mounting mechanism, added GMK Botanical clones and some Durock POM switches.
2. Got a KBDFans - Lite R3: a polycarbonate case with gasket mount. Built this one with some chinese keycaps and Boba U4Ts.
3. Then I sold the Tofu65, and got a Bakeneko60. This is a cast aluminum board with gummy o-ring mount, so the keyboard bounces when you type on it, thus your finger would hurt less if you type too much. I built this one with JWK Seals and PBT Xerox keycaps.
4. The best board I have at the moment is a Geonworks Frog TKL, built it with JWK Alpacas(my favourite switches so far), and NK Taro keycaps.
5. I have some things ordered in group-buy(imagine crowdfunding with the item-price for a project), Safa, MW Voynich, MW Pluto, and Potato65.

The title isn’t an exaggeration. With the money I’ve spent in keyboards, I could easily have gotten a second hand car really.

I’m beginning to feel content with my set of boards, and would not be investing so much more here on. Although, I’m looking to get a Moja65 when it’s available for Group-buy.

I’m also selling a solderable Potato65, it’s a gasket mounted, stacked-acrylic board. Please let me know if you wish to buy, it’ll get shipped to me by the end of this month and I can forward it to you :)

Apart from my journey, here are some suggestions if you’d like to explore this weird silly world of keyboards.

1. Join communities before you buy your first enthusiast level keyboard, IMKC, geekhack.org, subreddits I mentioned would help.
2. Always try to buy second hand things. Keyboard components especially case, and switches, have a good lifetime, and there are always people in this hobby looking forward to their next build and wanting to get rid of old things.
3. Try to resist panic-buys. As a thumb-rule, never buy something expensive without sitting on the idea for two weeks.
4. Explore different things: switches, mounting options, case materials, etc.