Mechanical keyboard manufacturing involves complex economic factors including minimum order quantities (MOQs), factory costs, shipping, tariffs, and marketing expenses that significantly impact pricing. For example, producing 500 keyboards at $200 each requires approximately $116,000 in initial investment, with potential profits of only $11,000 after expenses. This explains why group buy models remain necessary for most keyboard projects and why established brands like Neo can offer competitive pricing through economies of scale. Additionally, keyboard design choices such as CNC machined aluminum cases, stabilizers for larger keys, and hot swap sockets directly affect user experience and product quality.
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🔴 Geonix Rev.2.5 - FULL STREAM!Added:
Hello everybody. How you guys doing?
Hello. Hello.
Oo, my hands today are a little dry, but it's okay.
The Mandle Rain movie was good. Grou has character development, but I think people just want to hate it because Grou exists. Okay, that's pretty good news then. Still recovering from a hangover.
Uhoh. Also, hi Sniper. How you doing?
Hello everybody.
Um, yeah, I don't know. I'm recovering from, embarrassingly enough, I had popcorn the other day. Did I tell you guys about this? And I got like a kernel stuck in my throat and it's just been bugging me since. And uh today it's I think today like bugging me the most.
>> It's the day of >> So I think uh if it's not gone by by the end of the week, I'm going to go see a doctor or something.
It's the worst. I've had this happen once before and it usually just goes away on its own, but I don't know, maybe one more day of sleep. Thank you, clown. I appreciate the tier one. Also, um we'll do another giveaway at at the this whatever this is. I know I just haven't reset it, but whenever it says 300, it'll be a mystery giveaway.
Although, I think I already know what I'm going to give away. It's probably going to be a a QK board of some sort, but it's got to be mad annoying if it's been there for days. Yeah. It's also been like causing my throat to be kind of irritated, which is also equally as annoying.
Happy Memorial Day. I know I don't really don't I don't really do Memorial Day here in Canada, but for everyone who celebrates in the States, dot I really liked Project Hail Mary.
Really liked it. I would say it was a solid like eight and a half out of 10.
Did you get swollen? I think so.
Probably. Most likely.
How are things? Things are good. I went to the gym yesterday. I did a new tricep workout that I've never done before. And holy [ __ ] that kicked my ass. I'm still I mean, it's it's still there today, but yeah, it's it it really like it was crazy. I did tricep it was a tricep push down machine.
And I don't know, like I've never done it before, so I didn't know how much weight to put on. So I put on like 70 lbs, which I think equates to 35 each.
And I was like, "Okay, this I don't feel anything." So then I just incrementally just kept going. And then I ended up at like 180. And I'm like, "Oh, this still doesn't feel like much." And then after three reps with that, I was like, "Okay, this is way too much." So like I brought it down to like uh 110 or something like that. Um, I think that might have been the sweet sweet spot for me, but uh yeah, I think I think I did I don't know how many sets of that, but that was that was I think the one that did me in because I've never done that movement before.
Uh, which mant we building? Just a personal one today. I I have I' I've had this on my desk for dust for so long and I've been meaning to build this. This is a prototype p uh plates and a prototype PCB and it still works in the production units and I've been meaning to build this. So, um yeah, also some sad news uh ultimately with with how everything is going to pan out with um long story short, I wanted to to I might still do it. I wanted to do like a charity thing for one of the mantas, but ultimately it just seems a bit more complex than I thought. um if I want to collect the funds and then give it because the charity is not in Canada and just like it's it's probably just not it's it's like more than I'm willing at this point here to be completely honest with you invest in time to figure out how this is going to work without having to hire someone and spend a lot more money. Um the company that I wanted to work with they do have like a little uh what's it called? like you can put it on Twitch, but the the there's still like a fee that you have to pay for that. And ultimately, like I just I don't really want to spend anything. Like I just want if I'm going to collect the money for charity, I want the charity just to get it. Um so I think I'm going to postpone that. I think what I'm going to do is because we have two prototypes, I'm going to do the charity one for one of them. Probably that one you see right over there.
And then I think the patinaed one I might just either give away or maybe we can use that to fund raise something else for stream. I don't know.
But yeah, it it wasn't unfortunately not so straightforward like you said, Silver. I thought it would have been easier. That is the Tangerine SC one.
Yeah. Yeah. It's unfortunate.
All right, though. Well, I hope everyone had a good uh Monday.
Today has been I don't know what it is, but today has been super duper tiring.
I don't know why. I feel like everything's been like really slow today.
Uh you always stream when I go to sleep.
I'm sorry, Pro.
Maybe action a Vasa Green and give the profits a chair or auction a Vasa Green.
We don't have any extras. Unfortunately, there was not a single um viable extra that we we made.
Luckily, I mean, technically there was, but that's already accounted for now. So, luckily we we have everything.
>> I ordered a cake to celebrate our 13,870 hour anniversary. Then I thought, man, 19 months sounds way more normal. But it was too late. The bakery said, "We charge by the digit, man. An eight is expensive. It is like two zeros stacked on top of each other.
>> Can you imagine if they're just like, "Yeah, we charge by the digit." Thank you so much. I can ruin I appreciate you, man. I will win the mant giveaway and resell for 18 more billion dollars and donate to Trevor Project.
More billion is quite the number. It is.
It is quite It is quite the project to get a more billion.
Oh man, you know, I know I've watched the movie, but my god, I don't remember anything about that movie, and I hope to not remember anything ever about that movie.
I think that movie needs to stay like completely um a faded memory in my brain.
What else did you guys do today? How was your guys uh Memorial Day? You guys do anything? Just chilling? I um I also cleaned today and I think that was like my big task which I did. I got all of it done. Thank goodness.
I don't know if you can spoil but any uh are there any of the Manta commissions coming up in the black or motorsport colorway? I know. Honestly, I don't even know what motorsport looks like in person.
That is the one color we didn't prototype and I have no clue what that looks like in person. There was only a handful of those. that got um made.
That was the last minute community decision.
I watched my new car for the first time.
How did that feel? It was nice. It's a nice day here in Toronto. Ribs and wings.
That sounds good. Hello. Hello. I'm ready to buy a Vaza Manta for 70illion.
Is that higher than more billion?
Did you end up liking Project Hail Mary?
without spoiling anything because I do feel like this is an easy one to spoil.
I went in thinking it was plot A and it was like plot zed. Like it was so far off of what I thought it was going to be. Um, pleasantly surprised. I think it's worth the watch for sure, but again, I went in having no knowledge and I I do think that made it better. I only watched one trailer a while ago and I didn't even really remember the trailer.
BBQ with my parents and sister. Nice.
Also, Dream, I watched that Pokemon thing you sent. Was it you who sent me that? Oh my god, that Pokemon thing was so cute.
I read the book and loved it. Is the book better? Can we get a piss yellow colorway for the schema?
Damn. I don't know if that's on our list. It was so good I cried. I actually almost shed a tear at the end. It really did. I mean, I think it's actually Evan Call who did the music for it, who did Violet Evergard music, so it makes sense. If you guys are unaware, um, there is a Pokemon short, which apparently released last year in Japan, I think. Um, but I guess the translation, the official like dubbed version got released the other day and it it it really reminded me of uh what's it called? Um, Violet Everard.
I I it was my 9-year anniversary with the misses. Uh, we decided to go spend the weekend in downtown and she won a cheesecake factory. Long story short, I got the chicken schwarma. It didn't disappoint.
a Cheesecake Factory.
Dude, Cheesecake Factory is so weird because they they they I don't know if you guys have ever been. They they only have one here that I know of, and Cheesecake Factory has like a story book worth of stuff you can order, which makes no sense when you think about it, but it is crazy.
Um, honestly, everything I've ever gotten from Cheesecake Factory been like pretty decent.
Like I I can't I can't say I've had a bad experience. The wait times to get in a Cheesecake Factory are abysmal, though. But congratulations on nine years, Crummy.
Good evening, keyboard folk. I hope everyone had a good Monday. It's been a like it's been one of those days where I genuinely just feel like super exhausted. But I feel like it's just cuz I did a new workout yesterday and I feel sore. It's like 20 plus pages and always overwhelmed, but the food's always delicious and the portions are huge. I never finish what I eat at Cheesecake Factory. I usually just like just barely get to the end. Like I just crossed the finish line.
Damn trampoline. How do you even pronounce that one?
Uh we don't want any weight times usually at our cheesecape or we don't have any weight times. I think for all the Toronto people, I think we only have one, right? The one in Yorkdale.
I don't think I've ever seen another Cheesecake Factory, but that one there is like it's okay. Can't complain.
Like, like I said, never had a bad experience. Food's usually pretty decent.
All right, today's keyboard. So, we're doing a two-part stream today. We're going to look at a project that genuinely um I'm It's not so much that I'm excited for this. I'm just curious. I'm very curious. I've been curious about 40% boards. So, when Chosf Fox asked if I wanted to look at uh the GeonX Rev 2.5, I did some like research and I was like, "Oh, okay." They had like a 2.0 which had some some problems and it looks good on paper. I haven't opened it up, but it is a little like plank style or plunch or whatever it's called style board. I think it's super niche.
super duper niche, but the price seems pretty good for this all in fully assembled. Like we will be doing kind of a a little bit of a breakdown of this board today, but not going into super big breakdowns just cuz there's probably no point, but it looks interesting. It's a collab unit, too. So, it's I guess it's co-designed by a designer named Massro.
Uh, are you by any chance reviewing the Nexus XLAB DCR8 board? I hope so. I think that might be on my list.
Most 40s are niche. I would say maybe this even gets more into the weeds. Let me show you guys. Let me um screen share really quick because this definitely this definitely is going to be a very particular project.
Make sure this is the right page. We look good. Yes. Okay.
So, this is their project. Here it is. I mean, it says it starts at 107, but I believe just to scroll down really quick, the actual price point after all this is done is going to be 111. Not terrible pricing.
Apparently, this is all aluminum, which is cool. Also, apparently the RGB is super duper nice for this as well.
bunch of different switches you can get.
These are going to be low profile stuff.
And then it also has some of these. I don't know if it's going to switch for us here. Maybe not. It also basically has like a I don't know if it's polycarbonate or acrylic, but they kind of have like a see-through a semi see-through one. We're not looking at that today. But yeah, it's um a decent little price point. Like I can't complain personally for the price. Uh tons of different things you can get here. 18 milliamp battery. Uh it has vile compatibility.
I was a little skeptical skeptical about this because I have looked at boards before that state QMK and I think this is really important for a product like this.
However, I didn't have to ask. Usually, I kind of wait until after the review is done, but they actually sent me a BIN file a few days ago with an update that gets this to work in Vial. So, we're going to try that today, too.
I think out of everything again just to reiterate this even if the product is super great this is super important I think I'm going to start just for the sake of talking with you guys right now as well I think we we do need to start looking at keyword products and where they advert advertise via or vile or anything and we we need to start kind of just treating that as an actual objective thing now not just a well hopefully they get it solved later or we have the JSON file. It sucks but it's there. If they're going to advertise compatibility, I want the compatibility.
I do think that's really important. And I again, I was thinking about this today. I want to drive the point home.
I'm going to start looking at it a lot more under a microscope now. Not that we didn't before, but we're going to do it even more now. Um, are the switches proprietary? I know there's a bunch of different lowprofile stuff. I'm honestly not 100% sure, but we can take a look cuz there's different pin layouts for low profile, right? Says custom, but we'll see.
Um, what else do we got? The CNC mil.
So, they're saying this is CNCed. We'll take a look. Usually, you can tell there's telltale signs that this is actually just like a uh molded design type thing. That's one of the semi-transparent units, I believe. We don't have that one there today. And they do have some different layouts you can pick up, too, which is pretty cool.
Now, I didn't have the original one, but apparently I wrote down some notes.
Apparently, the original one Wait, where where is it? Here.
Uh, where is it? I actually asked a friend about this because he is really big into this, oddly enough.
>> God damn, dude.
>> Thank you, Drew. Appreciate the five tier ones. We'll we'll uh do a giveaway here in one second. Where'd I put my notes?
The old one, according to him, had alignment issues.
Thank you, Two Ghost. Appreciate the Prime. But yeah, the old one, so the Rev 2 unit had wobbly key caps, loose feeling switches, alignment issues, felt cheap, sounded inconsistent, and had a terrible wobble on the space bar because there was, for whatever reason, basically no stabilizer on this particular key.
So happy to see some of these changes being introduced.
I think that's a big thing. We got a normal like butt ton of foam, you know, 5 L acoustic package here. Pretty usual.
Um, they have a daughterboard in this which is nice.
Then they have some really cool key caps which I believe I've never heard of this particular profile. Some sort of low profile type thing. Might be Chosox's thing. I know they've been kind of into it.
And vial compatibility, which is good. We have Bluetooth 2.4 four and USBC 1,00 polling rate, which it is what it is. You can pick. I I don't really care about the polling rate personally on a keyboard. Anything that that's above like I don't know, 500's fine. And then we have different switches. I don't know which ones we have today. We'll have to take a look.
But yeah, pretty cool. $111. I would say rather, as someone mentioned earlier, I think the good word here is rather competitive for what's on the market.
And you get a little hard shell case, too. Let's take a look.
They did send this to me, by the way.
I'm assuming we can keep this. This is going to be sponsored. Won't stop me from being honest. I already actually have a bunch of research that I've already done onto the board, and I might already have a few things based off of some stuff that I did some research on.
It's so cute.
Actually, this has some weight to it.
Oh.
Oh, [ __ ] This is actually really nice.
So, this is all metal. Yeah, this is definitely CNC with a pretty good ano job on this, too. Damn. All right, Chos Fox.
Wow, this actually feels insanely premium. All right, I'm impressed already. What else do we get in here?
I think this is some extra key caps. And is this our little USBC or no USB adapter thing for the wireless? Okay.
Yeah, this is wireless as well.
I I genuinely want to learn how to use one of these. I'm a bit bummed we didn't get the one with the stabilizer in the center, but I will take other people's word on it. Apparently, the stabilizers work great on this.
Wow, this is nice, actually.
Fully CNC case.
We have a toggle on the back. USBC.
The key caps look great, too.
Is there another Bull Alex collab coming soon? Yes. Literally in like maybe two months, three months.
Cover up the first two letters in the name of the back. Onyx.
last geon.
Sorry, I I'm stupid.
It's too soon. I want too many boards.
Oh, this is good RGB, too.
All right. For anyone who's been wanting a little 40%, this might be a fun little pickup.
I mean, this is tiny.
I wouldn't say this is not overly heavy as well. Even though it's a full metal construction, I would be worried about tossing this in a backpack, though. I definitely use some sort of case.
Definitely definitely use a case for this. All right. to go over some notes though.
Um, from other things I noticed, again, I've never seen the Rev 2 in person, but from other things I noticed when I was looking at some photos, I watched tons of reviews about the Rev 2 as well. This seems to have obviously the added stabilizers, which is stabilizing your key cap if you get the 2U version. Uh, the case super solid from what I saw of the other one. The other one looked super cheap. The RGB does seem a lot better here. I would love to have seen maybe that half aluminum one. That would have been so cool. I I'll do a lights out here in a second, too.
Um, but yeah, very very fun. Now, some some complaints that I saw some other people doing some like light reviewing on this, which I want to see if this is also kind of a problem, is they're saying it's a very inconsistent typing feel or no, sorry, not feel, sound. I don't know how much that matters in this particular case, but I guess we'll find out. Um, but yeah, I think this is going to be great for someone who's using like, I don't know, someone who wants a little 40, who likes the ortho linears.
Uh, just something who someone who wants to bring something to work and likes layers of stuff. Yeah, travel would be a really good one, too, if you want something to travel with.
Ortho is something that I've genuinely tried to learn over the years and keep failing at. Let's see without the lights.
I mean, yeah, the RGB is pretty solid.
Cannot complain about the RGB.
That is hella solid for RGB.
Cool.
Let's see how this thing sounds. And then we'll take a look at the insides of the case.
Here, let's actually use this just so we get a nice consistent We'll find out what switches I use. They feel like a linear.
You know what? It sounds fine for what it is.
Uh, it's probably because it wants me to connect to something. It might be in Bluetooth mode.
I don't know. I got to figure out the modes here for a second. Um, okay. So, I definitely see what pe some people were saying about some of the corners sound different, which I think is fine to be completely honest. I think I just turn changed the RGB. I think the corners sounding different is fine.
I wouldn't really expect it to be completely consistent like that.
Yeah, I think that's fine. Let's um let's turn this off for now.
I mean, yeah, that's I think that's totally okay. Damn, this is a cute little case. Let's find out what's inside here. I think this sounds okay as well. I don't know exactly what switches we got, but we'll find out here in like two seconds once I open this thing up.
Did you guys like the sound?
Or is that new one I've been using? the new hit. I like I've been liking this a lot.
Let's also look at keycap quality because that's on my list for today as well.
So, these are a die sub key cap. Um, I don't have any problems with these. I think they look fine.
It's legible. The legends are quite big.
It's a not the thickest PBT that I've ever seen, but it it's thick enough.
Literally, I have no problems with this.
Cool profile as well.
Yes, I'll do the giveaway after this once I'm done taking a look at this little guy.
And then for the switches, it was one of those white switches. So, these we got today are the white res.
Okay. So these are just the standard linear. I believe there's also crystals.
>> Oh my god, it's on twins puller. I love that thing. Why did it take you so long to try it?
>> I got one like not too long ago inside another board. Actually, I quite I quite like this.
It is kind of nice. I'm not going to lie. I've been uh using it all day cuz I've been taking apart things.
Let's see. Is this a hot swap unit? I believe it was, right? I don't know if it is.
It is. I think this particular pin layout is pretty standard. I've seen this before. Right with the pins over here. Ammo, thank you so much for the prime. I appreciate you.
I'm pretty sure this is interchangeable, though.
So, we have some north facing LEDs.
Cool. Yeah, these look pretty standard.
I know there's a few different pin layouts though. Let's put this back now.
Well, this is fun.
I am glad that I think the major thing that is impressive about this is this is a I mean if you look back at the other one that they released this is like a total revamp which is nice. No, I haven't done the giveaway yet guys in a bit. Please let me take a look at the board. I'm actually really like liking this so far.
It is pretty cool.
Um, anyone else see the white dots between the key separation for which story? This is a huge upgrade.
Yeah. Yeah. Again, I've never had the Rev 2 in hand, but from from what I've looked at, the Rev 2 versus this is like a totally different board.
Are the small space bars hard to get used to? If I were to pick this up today, I would pick the TU. So you can get one where this is just together. I probably wouldn't get this the small ones. So in my journey of trying ortholinear, I I actually had a 40% a few of them actually um that I've tried.
I stink at using ortho. I really badly want to try. Maybe this is going to push me to try more, but I've always opted to get a larger space bar. Um I have tried doing the single keys. I stink at these. I'm terrible because I end up sometimes like I don't type, you know, normally. So, a lot of the times I end up like on a different key and I lose where I am. Is this the Grove made wool? Yes, it is indeed.
Uh, what makes this a 2.5 and not a three? You know, I don't know. Um, I was thinking the same thing when I was looking at it. I think this is more than just like a.5 iteration to the board. I I kind of feel like this is a huge step up compared to the 2.0.
So it's just uh would like to see staggered version. I would like to see a staggered version. I would I would like to see a staggered version. I would also like to see um even a non-l lowprofile version of this board just as like for someone else to have this without low profile cuz low profile is kind of tough to shop for sometimes. But I mean like in its current form I really do like this. No, I don't think we need um what 90 degree what the hell they said 90°.
But yeah, it is nice to see a company actually looking at their 2.0 like the, you know, the last product and actually improving on it. I have to give, you know, costfox some Trust Fox some credit here. Like we don't always get to see this with brands. Sometimes they make a product, it doesn't do well, and then they just kind of give up. So, it is nice. The case design is really pretty, too. Like, this is a huge step up from the old one. Anna is talking about how hot it is outside.
And it is.
Is it really hot there? It's like nice today. It's like 20 Celsius. Actually, let me see if I can pull up the the old one for you guys. Didn't even think to open that up.
Um, 2.0 here.
It's a real temperature scale that I don't know for what happened.
So, the old one. Okay, please load up properly. I think this is going to be the big thing to look at here. Biggest issue with the old one was that it was so wonky key caps wouldn't sit in the line properly. Yeah, that was the one of the very first things I mentioned, Mango. Um because when I was doing some research and looking at the old one, so I can show you guys from this one particular photo.
The old one which is right here. See right here? No stabilizer for the key. I also think based off of their old plate, it might have been too um soft compared to maybe what's in the new one.
I think the new one also has like a better foam stack. So, you're probably going to get a little bit more like stability with the key, but like you can see in the corner over here, like nothing's happening with this one here.
I was watching videos of people playing with the old one and it would just literally wobble like crazy.
So, it is nice to see no stab for 2U, especially for low profile. Like, you kind of need it.
I know sometimes you can get away with it, but you you do kind of need it. And you can clearly see there's space there for it, too. I couldn't even do the Olaf 40 with the numpad. I struggle with this one here. Who is this for IRL?
You know, Drew, there is a huge I wouldn't say huge, but there's still a quite a large subset of people who love tiny little travel boards like this. Um, people who like little 40%s with like an ortho layout. Um, I again I've have bunch of friends who like love these things.
OB is all plank converts basically. Yes, basically.
Who's using it for or what are they using it for? Variety of things. I mean, I can't really say one one thing or the other. Like, it's I mean, yeah, to be very general to type, but like it's everyone that I've met is like a variety for work, for home life. Mainly, I find people that I know use it as a workboard.
But here is the size of it compared to the Manta. So, it is quite tiny.
No, this is not Gian. Even though it says geonics, it is not geon.
I haven't I don't have friends who use 40 who use like these type of ortholineers and do coding. But I'm truly trying to understand the use cases. You'd be surprised, man. You'd be surprised. People love these things.
Actually, even the key caps look a lot better. I think that's going to be the biggest upgrade from the old one. So, let me show you the old one here, too.
The key cap shape itself, you can tell these ones here are not going to wobble as much based off of even just the shape. Kind of keeping it more flat along the edges. I think this also provides better separation for keys.
You know what I mean? So, it does allow some space in between the keys.
The dished arrows. Uh, oh yeah, I don't like the dished just having dished arrows makes no sense. Like the scoops there.
Damn, this feels really premium.
First time getting my hands on one of these guys.
Very cool. I don't think they've changed much of the shape overall, though.
Mostly just some uh minor, well, I would say major fixes. Again, I would say this is not a 2.5. This feels like a 3.0.
just rebind them and use uh Vim arrow.
I don't know. I I I'm genuinely going to try to use this.
Yeah, I don't have any like large criticisms for this. Again, it's mainly just things that I I kind of want in the future.
But, uh these are great for people who are already using layers frequently.
Absolutely. Bro said Vim Vim. Leave me alone. Adam, this guy. Dude, how's the rainy 75?
Never used one in my office. Um, the rainy I used at a meetup. It was all right.
Cool, though. Again, to go over all the notes that I wrote. Let me just write everything here. improvements that I found. Apparently, the case and I I don't know the weight of the old one um versus this one here, but apparently from a lot lot of reports, the old one felt very cheap. This is a much more dense case now, which is awesome. Um the added stabilizers for people who pick up the 2U. The price point is still phenomenal for this atund. Now it's 107, but it will be $111.
Better RGB from what I saw on the old one. Stabilized keys. So, the switches themselves or the key caps, one or the other, again, can't really compare at the moment, do have a uh better alignment slashnot as wobbly feeling. In fact, I would say there's realistically no wobble that I can feel at all, which is great news. Um, the old one sounded inconsistent. This still has some minor inconsistencies, but like I mean I think realistically from building hundreds upon hundreds of boards, you're going to get that around the edges of keyboards. There's no way around that. Even with an O-ring mount, they're still going to sound different.
Um, so I don't know if I agree with some of the inconsistencies that I saw a few reviewers for the 2.5 have. I think that's just bound to happen.
So, yeah. Cool. Trust Fox. Really cool job. If you guys were into a little uh 40% board, very fun.
The rain is fine. Just don't expect to get much modding potential out of it.
Um, yeah.
I I don't know. I've never built one myself, so they should make a split.
I agree.
Let's see. I'm going to open this up just really quickly.
Should I take this apart really quick? I kind of want to see inside. I want to see what they've done.
These key caps are a little tough to take off. Maybe I do have to use a wire puller for this. Let's just use our standard wire puller.
Get out of here. Okay, I don't know if I need to unscrew all these Phillips head screws. However, I'm going to comment on this. I can already see I I know this is not a super duper expensive keyboard, but like I don't know why people continue to use Phillips head screws in the keyboard world.
I know it's really common and I I get there's that aspect of things cuz I did receive that note one time as well that it's just a screw head most people have.
But I do feel like the better screws are still going to be something like hex or Torx. And I feel like most people most likely have access to those anyways.
Come here.
Phillips is fuming right now. Yeah, they're absolutely fuming. Does it show exactly where these I don't think it does. Might have to play some guessing games here.
Yeah, you can definitely tell the plate is more supported because of the foam for sure.
Actually, this is a really nice It's screwed down to the bottom of the case, but you'd never notice that. All right.
There are way too many screws on this, though.
Got to figure out where they all are.
Throw a 50 cent Allen wrench in there.
Exactly.
It just adds to premiumness of a product for me. But again, I know it's just having another thing. Not even 50 cents, honestly. for real. Way cheaper than that.
Sorry guys, I'm trying to play guessing games on where I can see screws.
I think I got them all. I think this is where all of them are here. All right, let's try opening this.
I'm going to try to do some gaming on this later. Just a very simple game. A random paid YouTuber is going to dog you on it for not using universal screw.
Wait, sorry. A random paid tech YouTuber is going to dog on it for not using universal screws.
Oh, for like not using Phillips.
I mean, I get it both ways. You know what I mean? Like I get the want for Phillips head screws, but like also I hate Phillips head screws.
So, are all these done for screwing this into the bottom or are some of these for other things? I guess we'll find out.
Let's see the internals of this bad boy.
Stream the gaming.
I'm going to keep it a buck with you guys.
Streaming gaming is very daunting to me.
At least the screws are magnetic. Okay, Jos Fox, give me some magnetic screws any day of the week for a product.
Any day of the week.
Okay, there's definitely more screws somewhere. I'm just not seeing. Um I think under the Oh, I see them.
Ah, yeah. I definitely You streamed Expedition 33.
Well, okay. Here's here's what I'm thinking. and some more thoughts in my brain right now.
Um, I do want to stream some games eventually. However, I don't know when I want to stream them.
I was thinking uh maybe during the summer there'll be a few days where I actually do want to do some keyboard stream or some gaming streams.
But like at the moment, it's just not something that like I'm dying to do.
There has to be another screw in here somewhere that I'm just not seeing.
Uhhuh.
I see them.
But I think during the summer because I know summer days for keyboard builds are a little slower.
Maybe I'll introduce some gaming.
The day you do a gaming stream is the day you're going to see a setup tour, but a setup I don't know. I feel like I don't have enough stuff for a setup tour. I know you guys said you don't care, but thank you, Rigeton. Appreciate you, man.
All right. Once I'm done the taking a look at this board, by the way, we'll do the giveaway.
All right. So, yeah. Okay. Exactly what I figured. We have a little bit of a foam stack with a non-adhesive piece of foam.
I really appreciate that.
We have a ribbon cable connecting the board as well. Let's actually go a little bit more centered here.
You know what? I genuinely really appreciate this. I feel like this is already a better setup than a lot of people doing custom keyboards.
We have our daughter board over there, which is a custom proprietary daughterboard, but that's fine.
Obviously, we have to house some of the wireless stuff and toggles, which is great fun.
And then we have a small little foam stack in between. We have some hot swap sockets. These are kale. It looks like kale sockets. I can tell by the death traps at the end here. It doesn't have underglow diodes that I can see. At least not that. I'm pretty sure these are all just per key RGB. So, I'm pretty sure the RGB is coming from the top only.
I would even say this is a a substantial length for a ribbon cable, too.
And everything looks like decently modable, too. They put some protective tape behind the cable over here, too, which is nice to see.
solid internals. I mean, like, you're not going to get a gasket mount into this. There ain't no way. This is a tray mount only.
Yeah, I would say ribbon cables are perfectly adequate, if not almost necessary for something like this. All right, I'm happy with this. Internals look fine.
The dampener looks like dessert.
I know why they went with the white dampener, but yeah, it does kind of look like a frosting or something.
What do you mean this isn't leaf spring pon gasket? Yeah, I know. I know. What do you mean?
Uh, these are their own switches. I believe these are the cloudy ones. I know there's a bunch of different ones here. Sorry, they didn't tell me ahead of time. Uh, white rain, sorry, white rain switches.
actual question is boards like this uh that are really not meant to be modded or messed with. Why hot swap sockets?
Because you can buy different switches there. Although there are few, you can pick up switches depending on your your typing style. So if you want like a silent switch and you've already bought the linear version instead of buying a whole new keyboard, I I know this is stupid OTY for me to explain this to you, but like that is truly the only thing for having a hot swap. It's still for the the base reason of user wants different switches down the road.
Uh it's market it's marketable and makes it repairable. Yeah, I I'm actually like totally fine with companies going even if it's not meant to be modded, totally fine with having um hot swap sockets installed.
I think it it can uh essentially do two things.
Yeah, I I I agree with Adam here. I think you almost want to have pre pre-built stuff as hot swap. If down the road you decide that this keyboard is not for you and maybe it's the switch's fault, it's easy to buy another set of switches.
It really is easy and it can breathe new life into a product you already own.
I feel like repairability is questionable. I don't know if repairability is something that I would say changes with this, but um I mean even if something were to break, it's still hard to fix things on your own. But in a lot of ways, I can I can see maybe this is going to be um more user friendly with something like this question. an MX2A black with 205 or 1990 pre-tools with GHV4.
I don't really love GHV4.
If you can swap the lubricant, then sure, but I'd pick the 1990 pre-tool.
The window key go here and it goes here.
Alts goes here.
But all right, it is now time for us to look at the second build of the night, which is going to be finally Oh, this is backwards.
A personal Manta PCB assembly I'm doing.
Don't forget the giveaway. Oh, yes, you're right. Let's do that right after this. Right after I put the key caps on.
But cool. I'm going to I'm actually very happy with this. Shout out to Chf Fox.
I think uh this is a very fun board. If you happen to be watching this video down the road, um I will be using this on a more long-term scale, not just a quick unboxing and, you know, some research notes.
During the edit for this YouTube video, I'll probably edit in a little section with some long-term notes if you guys are curious.
Where does the delete go? Where did they put this? Let me hold on this for a second.
Oh, this does not go here.
Cool little project from Trosbox. Yeah, dude. I've always liked Trosbox stuff. I feel like they've always made pretty halfdecent stuff, and I think this goes to show that they haven't lost that edge.
This goes here. Oh, no. The delete goes here.
That's what I mean. You really have to learn the layout.
Cool. All right, let's put this here for now and uh start with our next thing.
Misinformation. Yeah.
All right.
I like that, Alex. I'm curious about 40s. Many say it's the last frontier before going full split. Dude, I hear that so often from friends who are really deep into keyboards. They all say this is where people if you're really into form factor stuff, you end up going with something split ergo or 40 like this. It's It's crazy how that gets turned into these kind of things.
Okay, here's the deal. Today, I don't know what switches I want to use. I was thinking granite switches, but I was also thinking um maybe we do a random HMX switch I harvested out of an old board.
That's kind of a last minute addition to this. I don't have Razor Greens, but I was going to put it in this Manta just because I'm a little tired of this PCB assembly. I've been using this PCB assembly since I built one of the prototypes. So, we're going to do a little swap out today. Hamu heartbeats.
Random.
Also, me and Bull found out something today. I think we had requested I totally forgot about this. I'll be honest with you guys. We had requested these particular bags if you guys remember. And I think in the excitement of everything, we just got regular bags made.
So it seems like uh the tear away bags never made it to the production.
Oh well, literally unusable. Now we'll do a little carbon fiber.
What uh what switch would you recommend on a titanium plate?
You know what? I was literally about to say use a tactile switch and using gatoron type bars is literally the perfect choice. Absolutely.
CF plate on Manta is fire.
Yeah, this is going to be a fun one.
[ __ ] What do I use though for switches?
Do I just use the I don't have any Nixis anymore? Like I'm all out. So maybe you guys can help me identify what these were. I just kind of put them to the side.
I don't remember what these are. I think these are in HMX Switch.
Any ideas?
They were in a really old modded. Well, not old, but like something I probably did like, are these highest?
Long time no see Mr. Alex. Hello, Mr. Bull.
Bull, do you remember these hot swap sockets?
I I don't think these are highest, right? Interesting. MK sells special edition crush 80 with 1.6 nonflex gut PCB and two nonflex plates. How much is it? I, you know, I keep forgetting they have a Crush 80.
Well, we could do these or we could just do granite switches with a cherry space bar.
What do you guys think?
There's no wording on the top of the housing at all.
My only gripe with this, again, this was last minute harvested out of this. Um, I don't think the stock lube on this is perfect, but we can use them. HMX, Napoleon, Ice Cream. Actually, you know what? That might be a legitimately.
Did I do Granite and CF? Okay. Do you guys just want these? Is that actually the right switch?
HMX, Napoleon. I think that might literally be the Switch name.
Or maybe not.
Neapolitan. I just made that up. They kind of do look like a Neapolitan ice cream though, though, don't they?
Um, I don't know. I don't know what these are. Do we just want to do the random HMX switches for funsies?
I got I got baited by OQ.
I hate that ice cream, dude. As a kid, whenever my parents would buy that particular ice cream, I would be so upset.
Okay, we'll just use these, bro. Because I hated the strawberry flavor. It does not taste natural to me.
I've always hated it.
I also hate sherbet. I'm sorry, guys.
Sherbet ice cream is just not my thing, bro.
Wow, Alex.
I've always been more of like a rocky road ice cream kind of guy growing up.
Oh, maybe these are it. Yeah, HMX Porros. These look identical to this.
Oh, wait. Maybe not. These are more pink.
I'm really not sure.
These could be it.
No, then these are not porros. Oh, and these also have a little LED diffuser thing, too.
Oh, let's do the giveaway for the board, too. Yes. Yes. Okay, let me set that up right now. Literally keep forgetting cuz got laser focused.
Um, mystery.
I think it's a QK board. I have a few that I want to give away, but go for it. Mystery giveaway board. I do ask for winners to pay shipping.
But but go for it, guys. Enter.
Giveaway time. I'll give the winner an option between things today and then we'll do another giveaway at when it says 350 subs.
Uh, now I want to watch Spongebob.
Could these be MX2As?
These could be HMX dirty pink lineers.
Let's see.
HMX.
No, no, no. These are definitely not it.
Those are a totally different color.
Did I just see the feds join the giveaway? What happened?
Pardon moa.
Uh, you should ask nicely. Wait, hold.
>> You should nicely ask B for one of his 450 packs of dry nixies. You got those, B? I didn't even know Bull had dry Nixis. Maybe I should order some from him cuz I am running out of my MX2A's. And I do want some cherries as backups.
Yeah, I really don't remember what these are. They were in a a board that I wasn't like too keen on it.
$22.
Guess that's not terrible.
Waiting on the Eve 65 to restock. Did they announce that this going to be restocked?
Silent Works naps. I haven't heard of those.
Also guys, um I have I have uh today we were trying to figure out what we were doing for dinner.
And you know guys, I really hate going to Costco. Like I love it and hate it because we ended up having we like we're in this weird issue now where there's only two of us, right? But you buy such bulk at Costco that you end up kind of having like and we don't have a big fridge.
you end up having like the same things for dinner for what feels like a week.
Um because you buy so much bulk of it, you know, we don't really have any like we have friends around us, but like we don't really have a lot of family would probably want the stuff that we picked up. Hm. Gotcha. Let me look.
I might have made a mistake. I bought the actual sterling. Wait, actual or sorry, steering wheel from BMW M4 it. What were you trying to buy?
No, we I don't know, man. HX Parro is the closest thing. I mean, these could be maybe these are an early rendition of it or something.
Jibus, that's disappointing. Do you guys ever take a selfie with your fridge, print the photo, and then stick it on the fridge?
No, but that's a genius move.
That's very genius.
Are you positive these are HMX?
I mean, I'm like 90% sure.
I don't know. There's no markings.
I I really don't know. Like I said, I was not going to even plan on using these, but then I found them in a random board today and I was like, might as well.
Tiny pink.
We'll have to I'll have to do some research after this. Maybe Alex Frank can switch these. No, I would never do that to you, guys.
Never ever.
Unless these are a key switch, but these do not feel like a key switch.
I'm pretty positive these are HMX.
That switch is in the picture, is it?
Damn. I want to be one of those people that collect a bunch of switches.
Is there a specific plate that you like with Nixis? Anything aluminum basically?
Anything actually more firm is my usual answer there. Just a more firm plate.
All right, let's draw let's draw our winner for the board, shall we? So, giveaway of the night goes to AM. Wait, didn't AMD just win something?
Hold on one second. AMD, congratulations, congrat No, that was Ravius. I was thinking of Ravius. AMD, congrats. Congrats.
Damn.
AMD Expo, can you send me a DM?
R2. Yo, I've been keeping track of your your giveaway board. Ah, it's going through customs, but I already paid the customs fee for you. So, I'm guessing I'm guessing it's because it's Memorial Day today. It's just like taking its sweet ass time.
But your board should be there. It says this week.
It got It went It's going through customs hell.
Been off Twitch for a while. Yeah, Ming.
What's up, man?
No way. The board should be fine. Yeah, I have no doubt.
I missed it. And AMD said that if he won, I could have it. Oh, but I'll give you an option of what you can pick from AMD. We'll do the next uh giveaway at uh 350.
Little 350 subs.
Um, yeah, if you don't mind just sending a Twitch whisper, it's just easier for me to keep track of the giveaway winners there.
If those switches have a pink stem and bottom housing with a white top housing, those might be HM HMX tiny pink from eBay. You know, that might be where I got these. Let me see.
No, no, the bottom is more like a a brown housing.
See?
It does look like a white a white top though and a very light pink with the diffuser too.
Again, these could be totally different.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty positive these are HMX of some sort.
Have you seen HMX yogurts? No, but I heard about those recently.
I have a whole bunch of actually I'm going through some package hell right now as well. Um, I have a few packages I've just been waiting on forever. Did I tell you guys about this? I have switches I ordered from a month ago. I have a desk pad I ordered from a month ago. And then I have a few other keyboard accessories.
No, I got a story about the Ary stuff for you. I'll tell you that in a second.
But um it's all just stuck in the Missasaga sorting facility here in Toronto.
And then I recently had a keyboard sent to me by Uni Keys as well as some switches and that's also now stuck just waiting.
So Oh, I did regular caps. Why did I do that for? And then yeah, so the AI stuff got delivered.
um to whom I'm not sure, but they are going to be sending me out a replacement or a um unit for the PCB and plates.
So, I guess it went to dreamland of some sort. You know what I mean? Basically nowhere.
Shake my head Ontario.
Dude, it's so bad. I Everything's in like package hell right now. I really want the desk bed that I ordered.
Yay. Yeah, I know. Such a pain in the ass, man.
But they they were nice enough to send everything out again. I'll have to follow up once they send it out.
I ordered it like a month and a half ago and still not here. My Neo75.
Did they ship it? Ship it. Uh, it's kind of random, but I've been using a $10 board I bought off Amazon for about five years and bought an Evo 75 a few days ago because of your vids. I'm so excited. Hell yeah, dude. Uh, thanks for getting me into keyboards. I'm excited to have my first nice board. You know, I think having a high-end keyboard because I, you know, I I've always thought this having a nice keyboard because we're using this we're using this every day. Like realistically, it is so nice like to just be like, "Yeah, I I invested in a typing device that I literally that literally sees use every time you're on the computer basically."
Uh, Alex, we are emailing about Zoku, but um I have a weird question for request for schema. Can I include the inquiry? Yeah, absolutely. Go for it.
Wish.
I think uh unless it's a new build request, it's fine. I'll just answer the question there.
All right. Now, we're going to put this into the keyboard.
What if I buy a keyboard and never use it? Well, collectibles are also something that I think is totally fair as well. You can have collectibles.
I sold my Neo 65 Core Plus and my drawing tablet so I can have some funds to buy a Tofu DKL. Hey man, Tofu DL is really nice.
I think I think you'll be very happy with a Tofu TKL.
Uh can't really push for an F1. I I think the new Tofu TKL's are visually very in line with the F1s. I think the F1s definitely have a slight bit more of a prettiness, but dude, they're they're so close nowadays.
I do like these switches. I'm just getting bored of them.
Still being number one recommended board in your page.
Yeah, dude. The I would say most of the Neo stuff these days are like top. It's It's really tough to find. Um, and it's really just due to the value perspective of what Neo offers. It's really tough to find something else. I would say like the number one most recommended board I can I can genuinely offer people right now is like Neo75, Neo 98. Um, the Core Plus has become like one of my favorites recently.
And then outside of that, like the Eve 65 is 100% something I'd recommend, but like I don't even know when those boards restock.
60 core is so good. I'm a big fan of the 60 core.
Super excited for it. Thanks for No, no problem, man. I tried my best.
All right. Hearing you say this is funny because I uh don't ever see you use your sonnet getting even though it can we get a banana in it. I don't want to hear him today.
My sonnet is actually sitting right there. Actually, you do it. I'm going to make you super Adam so you can ban him.
The QK series is pretty good too. A tad more premium. Yeah, it definitely is really premium feeling. the the QK stuff.
Do I have any recommendations for caps?
If you can find yourself a nice find yourself a nice set of Mud Beam, Mudbeam looks great. Um, if you can find yourself Cladney, cladney looks really good.
Bing Soo might look really nice, too, actually.
And then outside of that, I would say like anything beige or neutral is really nice.
Can I have your mud beam? Nuh-uh.
I know. There's just not a lot of sets at the moment that I think I can think of. Is there any um is GMK like Tiramisu still available?
I honestly don't know.
All right, let's take these off and swap out. I'm going to pick different key caps cuz honestly, I'm getting a little tired of those key caps, too.
Yeah, maybe maybe Tiramisu.
I swear I saw Tiasu recently. Yeah, if that's available, I'd say go for that.
Tisu is a great set.
Well, I don't know if blue would look good on the pummus.
I don't know about that.
Pardon me, Peso.
GMK Henderbait is dropping again. Was it GMK or was it DCS or something?
I might pick up Handerbait, too.
I've been, you know, I'm kind of addicted to those sets now. Those are kind of really fun sets. I'm here, Alex.
Let's start from the beginning. Oh, [ __ ] Oh, rats.
When I close my eyes, I can pretend that I have a Manta. Well, Manta Extra soon.
So, here's the time frame for everything. Manta Extra soon. After Manta Extras, um, most likely schema will run for collab projects.
after schema.
Um, actually I don't want to go too far.
Never mind. That's be the only two things. Schema looks peak.
So, okay. Here's the plan for schema. By the way, I'm I'm really really excited for this. We're going to be doing schema MX builds. I think a lot of MX builds you'll probably see from me and Bull.
We're also going to have a bunch of other people cover the schema as well, just so they can take a look.
We're g I'm going to I think Bulls is going to maybe do this first, but eventually I'll do a whole effect schema with the with the production units, then EC schema. So, we should be able to show off everything ahead of time.
Um, that's going to be very cool. Then you're giving one to me. I don't know yet.
There is some really cool stuff we have uh planned after schema is southpaw.
Wait, Southpaw.
You've peaked chat's interest.
Well, okay. Everyone's been asking for a TKL. Maybe me and Bull will think about it. Sold it to EC, bro. Yeah, I'm super excited to see how that's going to turn out, man.
I'm looking for a classic vintage keyboard. Something like the classic.
>> Please put future funk on this mant. I beg of you.
>> Oh [ __ ] Should I put it back? Okay, maybe we'll put it back today. Um, I don't know what's available like the class 65. The only thing that's available is like the classic TKL right now, but it's not metal.
Will we get a bulk discount for one of each?
[ __ ] I don't know if I want to like put this out yet. So, Bull and I were thinking is Bull in chat right now? I feel like I want Bull to talk about it.
Bull and I were thinking about doing like a complete collection for schema because some people were joking around about it about how someone wanted like a super because it's it's alak cart like you can buy like all the tops if you want. Um we were thinking about doing like a super super set of all of the stuff with your choice of PCBs and plates and stuff like that. So you can pick just one PCB and plate, you can pick five, whatever. But the point is, you get a a discount or something if you want to pick up all of the color combinations.
Um, it wouldn't be $10,000. It'd be much much much much cheaper than $10,000. But if you I guess if you pick up all the plates and PCBs, it might run up the price a bit more.
That sounds insane.
Yeah, it it would do it. It'd be pretty funny. We don't expect anyone to get it, but like it'd be funny. Yeah, it'd probably be around $1,200ish, but you would essentially get enough combinations for like five keyboards basically, which is pretty crazy, too.
Raw bottom and all different tops.
Yeah, we're really Dude, I'm going to be honest. Like we were excited for Manta, but we were nervous for Manta because Manta was a project that we put a lot of love into that we ultimately Manta had a higher price point. We were a little nervous for the higher price point, but Schema Bull and I are coming into this and we're like, we love the price point of this board.
We love the simplicity of the board as well. And I think most of all, we just like how this is a basic gasket mount with tons of ways to make it your own in terms of customizing it and doing Hall effect, EC, MX, whatever the [ __ ] you want. So, I think we're both really excited for that.
Um, I don't know if we've thought about a PCD with arrow keys. I can't promise you that.
Like a 64 layout, you mean?
I don't think we've talked about that, but technically you can just pick up your own 64 PCB.
>> God damn, dude.
>> Thank you, dude. Aa, thank you so much, man, for the 10 tier ones, dude.
Appreciate you, bro.
Did I show you guys the other one I patinaed? Look, the back is starting to patina now. Look at that. Ever so slightly.
the PCB is going to be the new ones coming out that Bull has. We don't know yet.
Possibly, possibly not.
Love you all. Thanks, man.
All right, so I also did pick up some more gas.
I think I'm almost ready to open this up to more people. People want patina commissions just for flame patas. But that's how it turned out. Turned out really cool.
Another pattern that I I tried to do.
You should let it out. The gas. Okay, here we go, guys.
Yeah, this one here turned out really sick.
So then I'm going to try a different pattern. Um, right now I think the price I'm I'm going to be charging for it depending on how much I have to do is going to vary, but I think the the price I'm probably going to charge is between $50 and $75 depending on the the board.
Like if it's a lot, then yeah, I have to unfortunately charge a bit more cuz they do take some time to do.
But yeah, 50 to 75 bucks. It's I don't think it's out of this world crazy expensive, but yo, I mean, this looks nice, too. Just plain plain jane.
The proto patina.
Where is the proto patina?
So, that was done with butane gas, which I tried to do butane on the last patina that I did. Not that one there, but the one prior. And I'm not going to lie, it didn't turn out green at all. I'm still I think it might be just the copper we used for this.
I don't know.
But yeah, it's definitely um different.
I low key just want to wipe this hole away and try again just to see what happens in dwell time then I'm not really sure.
I really don't know. I couldn't tell you guys.
I don't think it looks good to be honest. Kevin, I'm in the same boat as you. I actually like the other ones more. I've said this since day one that everyone really likes this patina.
Kevin, you you don't have to even worry about being honest or anything. I'm in the same boat, bro.
That's amazing. Yeah, everyone seems to really like this particular one.
All right, the Vasa green one slaps.
Honestly, all the patas I've seen so far look really good.
All right, let's get some future funk on this bad boy.
I love the latest one that I did.
Honestly, I'm considering like I'm considering taking this fin. I have one more raw fin as well, brand new in the package, which I don't think I'm gonna open yet. But I'm considering trying that patina that I did for the last one on this fin cuz I think it looks nice.
Future funk.
Wait, do we want future funk or do we want to try something different this time?
I lowkey kind of want to try something different.
Future Funk is the goat of silver. I have fabric. Have you tried patina using spray like vinegar?
I have not tried that fabric. Do I have fabric available? I'm down to try fabric. Isn't fabric just blue? Isn't that what that we had for Pacific?
Do we want fabric?
Actually, even kind of future funks kind of like purple blue. I mean, here I'll read out some stuff I have.
Well, actually, let me read out some stuff I have that I want to use before I get too ahead of myself.
This might be a fun today.
What about something like GMK Twozy?
Would Tooie look good? It's like a white and what? Like blue set or white and purple set?
Um, that's too much.
No.
Yeah.
You know what actually might be a fun set to use today?
Botanical.
Twoy or botanical today.
I'm just trying to use some sets I've never used before in a while.
Twoy over botanical. Neither. Dang. Hi MP. How you doing?
That'd be a cool set, but let's see others. Okay, let's do a let's do a poll, bro. Why is it always red line? Why does red line always get voted?
Mutagen. [ __ ] Men would be sick on this, but let's just pick one of these two.
Oh [ __ ] Can you run the poll for me, Adam? I don't have a keyword plugged in.
Actually, I can just use this.
Let's plug in this guy slash pole. Oh, thanks. Appreciate you.
Why'd you put neither? That's [ __ ] Go ahead and vote, guys. Twoy or botanical? If you pick neither, I'm going to spin a wheel.
I think I have that set shortly.
Oh, actually I have another set that's new. I don't know what this is, though.
It's a I think this is [ __ ] set.
I forgot to mention this.
I actually don't know what this is.
What does this even look like? Is this like purple? She looks good.
Is it like a It looks kind of like key coobo.
She Oh, that's just Okay.
Oh, this is like very purple.
Maybe not this today.
Maybe a bit too purple for me.
You're too purple. It texture on she feels like PBT.
Oh, does it? Kind of curious to see what this looks like in person. Let's just open it.
Looking very purple today, Alex.
Let's see what this looks like.
JLM, thank you so much for the prime, man. I appreciate it, dude. Actually, this might not look too bad. It's a good purple.
If you if we happen to vote for neither, we'll just use this since you guys don't want to use these.
We'll let the timer run through, though.
We'll just chill till then. I need to have some water anyways.
My prime is for Tuesday. Did you Did you vote? I'm new to the hobby and I really like the Manta. Will it come back in stock? So, Manta will have extras in about a week, I think. Check Bull Keyboards for extras there.
In the future, there may be Btock units.
However, I am not sure what colors that would entail. I am also not sure if those will need to be recoded. I'm also not sure of the quantity, but there's guaranteed going to be some extras from Mr. Bull. Uh, I don't know how many extras there were of Tangerine units. I don't know. I don't have the count of extras, period. I don't know what Bull like had to use for replacements, etc. in the future. We've already talked about it. There might >> But Alex, this is one of those key coobo sets that doesn't come with the 65% right column standard.
>> I have extra pieces for this, I think. I hate when they do that.
So, yes, there will eventually be more um more mantas, like perhaps a second run. Uh, I didn't get to participate in the group last year because I don't know if I would move or not. No worries. We're we are considering it like more mo more likely than not.
Between Twi and neither.
All right, we're just using Twoozy.
We're just going to use Twi. I honestly haven't used Twi in a hot minute. So, please no Twi. Why someone someone used a prime sub for Twi?
Actually kind of bummed that botanical didn't win.
I would love to buy all the fins if you did another drop.
Like I said, we're we're highly con considering it. She do another long poll. No, no, no, no, no, we can't do she.
We just had a vote poll thing. I mean, you guys have points. You guys can pick with points if you guys want. He paid for it. Oh my god, dude.
What is up, my goat? Hi, Sushi. How you doing? Oh, GMK dust fell into this now.
She E.
Guys, do you want to set up a manta command for when people want to know the manta?
Nah, it's fine. I don't mind yapping about it.
I don't mind.
Also, I saw someone me asked something about schema. If you asked about schema before, do you mind repeating it? I don't see where that was.
How could you get tired of people wanting your project? It's a It's a genuinely a nice feeling. Um, stupid question. How do you lube your springs?
I just put a little bit of lube on the top and bottom of the spring. I don't go overboard. More modern springs, I feel like, don't really need to be crazy lubed. So, you know. Okay, hold on.
I'm getting some messages about the key caps. Would you guys be okay since it tied instead of me just deciding on it?
Should we do a wheel spin thing between she and Tuzi before I go too far in putting on keycaps?
Yay or nay?
I can't get marbles to run on the Mac.
Okay, let's let's get it uh decided on the wheel spin or wheel. Is it wheel of names? Yeah, this is it here.
So she or choosing is it this button? There we go. Okay.
All right. Here we go. How do I spin this again? Just hit enter. Oh, click the spin.
Actually, hold pause.
or oh [ __ ] sorry I'm I'm messing up with this. So we're going to do shezy ban and it Not the result I was truly hoping for, but it's okay.
So nice.
>> And banana.
Oh well, we'll get him next time.
We'll do it next time. Spin again. Alex, make me super mod really quick. I think it landed on Ben. It was my glasses.
They were dirty. I guess this color right here. I would love a whole set in this particular color. I don't know if lavender is close to this.
I think it's a little bit more not like that. Like more lavender leaning, more warm.
>> I thought there last week.
>> Ow. I should I should stick to that, huh? Is Blurle this color? I don't remember. I have Blural, too, which is crazy. I just don't want to take it off the keyboard. It's on.
Two was made as a homage to the designer's mother. Actually, that's really cute.
Is there some history on Twi that I should brush up on? That is super duper cute.
Uh, what's your opinion on ceramic key caps and metal key caps?
Oh, my long answer for metal key caps that I will try to shorten, metal key caps is very dependent on the type of stem that you get. Um, I will say in most cases if you're a keyboard enthusiast and you care about things like how straight your key caps are, you know, if it's damaging your switches, you will probably hate metal.
There's only one company doing metal that I've seen that makes sense, but they're still not perfect, which is the new stuff from Wu.
I do think it provides a pretty fun sound signature. You have to be into it though.
Ceramic on the other hand, I don't know.
I'm not a big fan personally.
Um, I think ceramic is it has some flaws in like how they produce them and they're I don't know.
They're not like the best sounding, but I would pick ceramic over metal any day.
Is it hot in Canada right now? I mean, it's like 21 Celsius today.
Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that. As much as I do like the other materials, I'll always end up back with just standard plastic.
It's It's tough wanting to really use the other materials.
Uh, Helheim Design. I mean, I still talk to him. Is he doing business still? I don't know if he has anything listed on his website, but I'm sure he'd ship it out to you.
A key is super interesting, right? Like, I think they're really nice people, right? But being a nice person doesn't mean you produce a great product.
A keys has had its fair share of trouble with particular things about the metal key caps.
Um they're yeah they're not sand seeds.
So they are going to be molded basically.
But the problem with a keys is the stem.
The stem stinks. The like I said the only person producing a halfdecent combination of metal and plastic to make sure the stem is good is Wu.
So so A keys can produce something like a shine through metal key cap. However, I still think they're going to be problematic. I've had like four A key sets so far and each one of them I have gotten super frustrated with. In fact, to be completely honest with you guys, recently I got so frustrated with one of the A key sets because I was trying to get it on one of my keyboards to take some pictures, it broke one of the stems of my switches, and that's because you need to adjust each individual stem per keycap for it to make sense. I ended up throwing away the whole set because I'm not going through that again. Like, I just recycled it. Like, I'm not dealing with it. I don't want anyone else to deal with it. They're not great in that sense.
So, it's either they're too loose or too they just break off your stems because they're too tight.
But yeah, that's my experience with metal. I would say for the most part, like I said, the only person doing it right is Wu, but even them, they're not perfect.
I've been in the hobby four years and yet I can't understand the difference between all the clacky keyboards.
It's nuanced. I feel like you have to have a whole bunch in front of you to kind of fully appreciate it. Sometimes I've tried Serake, but not in the long term.
Like, I don't own a set of Serake stuff, but I have tried it. Like I said, I'd rather pick Seraki stuff over metal stuff, but not keen on either.
Derp, how you doing, man? Feel like I haven't seen you in a hot minute.
Uh, what do I want to put here?
Delete. Delete. Delete.
[ __ ] We putting print 32 Celsius. My girlfriend would love 32 Celsius.
All right. No, this this looks good on the board. I'm happy we used Twozie.
Twozy looks super sharp on this.
Oh, sorry. Minerals. I did not. My bad.
Um, do you feel like uh do you have a feel for the general business state of the hobby? Kate is taking a break from he to be honest. Things are obviously slower, but I I don't want to say that's just because the keyboard hobby is slow.
The keyword hobby is normal pace, but I think people like if we want to have a discussion about it, I aren't I mean the economy is not super duper great. I think there is a sense of uneasiness with with people and I think people are choosing instead to buy nothing and save rather than keyboard stuff. Also, it's summertime, like it's spring/summer. It's always a bit slower right now. Um, so I don't think it's a sense of the projects or anything is a bad state, but I think it's just a coincidental time of like it's, you know, the time of year where more people are outside. I think the overall economy of the world's not super great. Uh, a lot of uneasiness politically, which always changes how people buy things. Um, things have been going up in price while wages have been rather stagnant. So again, kind of economywise.
So I do want to say it's that like people are clearly buying things. I think people are being more selective of what they're buying.
>> Alexot wave.
>> Thank you Soundtrack. Appreciate the tier one.
And I will say keyboards are probably entering that time. And this is a really good conversation to have. I think keyboards are entering that time now where people are deciding to be more thoughtful with their purchases. Even if they have disposable income for the keyboard hobby, people aren't buying everything that gets released.
I really feel like people are wanting to be sure that the project they want to support is something that actually is good.
mainly because people have been burned so many times. People have bought things and decided this is not what they want. So, it's a mix of everything, right? Like, do you guys feel the same way on the last point of people being a little bit more thoughtful with their purchase?
Well, CO is I think comparing anything to CO's going to be awful right now. I don't think that's like the most valid thing to do.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you, Crummy.
Also, my eye is great. Thank you so much. It's It's a lot better now.
I finally stepped back after the gist.
Yeah, people are literally don't have the money. Well, no, I'm saying like in the situation where someone does want to make a purchase, oty. I do think they're being more thoughtful with what they're spending their money on because I am I am seeing like projects that I would say like maybe that are terrible actually not hit these days.
So yet some people have like nine kohakus.
Well, I think collectible things like kakus are always going to be popular, but I'm talking about more new things that pop up.
I'm about to be real unthoughtful with my schema purchases. Oh my god, you guys are too too kind. Too kind.
But I feel like that's what's people are doing too much in the hobby comparing to co a little bit. Yeah.
Is Gist no longer a thing? Probably.
They made themselves no longer a thing.
Well, yeah. And again, like in that case, their minus I think the Finn was fun, but like people are clearly like they're not interested in it, right? And like we can't kid ourselves. We we we we literally can't anymore. And that's kind of even with like the Metanoia, for example, that I looked at recently. It's a really cool board. But like the new the new thought process is well if I was able to get X other board which had a lot more to it for$400 whatever dollars which is the same price as the metaninoia does it make sense for $460?
And that has to be a way you look at things too. Um, I know there's always the art of things as well, but sometimes the art doesn't always make value sense and you have to look at it from that perspective, especially for small batch projects.
So, what am I doing? I'm looking at a DM.
One sec, guys.
Oh, never mind. Never mind.
Guist essentially exit scammed AEX Cloud and myself and a bunch of other people haven't left without product and no answer from guys. Charge back. Just charge back if you have the if you have the chance to. So nice.
>> Super duper wholesome stream chat less than three.
>> Hold on. What? What did I answer me?
>> I don't Do I have that somewhere? I don't even know where that is right now.
Let me go see if I can find it in already did. Yeah, just just charge back.
I'm still not confident in group eyes.
Totally valid. I think it's fine to not be wanting to to join a group eye.
Totally valid, dude.
Where the [ __ ] are people finding Kohakus? I did a deep web dive and found nothing. Mech market still has some pop up every now and then. I'm going to be real with you guys. As much as I really like the Kohakus, I don't really advocate anyone spending over a,000 bucks on them. Like I love keyboards and I always think that yes, there's value in an artwork and value in like creations, but I I do think that and again Elaine's awesome and I I love Singa stuff.
There has been a lot of like overp pumping and dumping with the the Kohakus, you know, just a lot. It's not even so much that they're overhyped. I would say it's just they are rather inflated and I kind of feel like it's on purpose sometimes.
Like not in a good way.
The project I am most excited to get my hands on right now, aside from skiing my mint texture, is the mid one. Dude, the mid one's so [ __ ] cool. I was literally playing with it this morning.
It's right here. This little guy. So cool. I had to send it back though because it's missing the two screws in the front. Such a fun keyboard. Um, wait, what am I getting? Oh, yeah. They didn't want me to use the artisan.
I don't know if I have that anywhere.
Honestly, it don't think I have that available.
I don't even know where I put that.
Okay, you know what it might have to not be able to use it.
I think if you're a collector, the [ __ ] always makes sense. I think that's a good way to put it to Wish. But if you're not looking for value when buying one. Yeah, exactly.
I know people want more in stock, but custom keyboard brands have to think long term. Well, again, like let me type on this keyboard first and we can go into some detail about stuff cuz I I can offer you guys a whole bunch of my opinions if it means anything at all.
Let's see what these random keygeek or HMX switches sound like on this.
Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I like this as much as the other switches we had.
These are definitely a lot sharper.
Yeah, this is all force broke. The switches are just sharp. I also, like I said too, some of the switches felt like very poorly lubed. These are stock.
Actually, this switch needs to be replaced. This feels sticky. This switch, I don't know if I love these particular switches, but it still sounds fine.
I'm not in love with them. I think I might switch this out another time for granite switches again.
Preloop switches always feel sticky.
Yeah, like the enter feels weird.
Some of them have like a weird scratchiness while some don't. Oh well.
Uh, this is from Groveade.
Switch it. Now, let's switch out the switches while we chitchat about keyboard stuff. I'm not loving this. I want to go to I want to go back to granit.
Let's do that.
Let's go back to granit on the carbon fiber.
[ __ ] Maybe it's a good thing I don't know the name of these switches. I don't think I like them.
I need to go to workout. You do you, man. Do your workout. That's important, too.
Um, okay. So, to go back to the conversation, I don't I don't think right now it's feasible to do instock stuff.
I really don't. I think if a brand's trying to do in stock, they either have money already or they're taking a huge risk, which is also fine.
But it's it's very tough. Um, for example, even if a keyboard was to cost, let's just let's just call it $200 per unit cost, right? So, the factory is charging $200 per unit.
And we'll even for the sake of being generous, we'll call it $200 shipped.
TypicalQs, I would say you'd want to get to like 300 depending on the project. That's how come you get to those prices. Uh, and that's even kind of low.
Um, because that's why some of these projects cost like 500 bucks.
But, uh, okay, let's just say that we get to $200 a unit. Let's just say we do an MOQ of 500.
So, if we do the math, let me plug in a keyboard with numbers because I don't have numbers on this right now. But, let's do some math right now.
Let me open my notepad up. So, $200 time 500 units equals $100,000 right off the bat. So, you would need as a business 100red grand. And again, we're going to be generous and call that shipped.
Now, you have to think of some other stuff, right? You have to think of storage. Let's also just be super duper generous and say that you have a home and you're going to create some space in your basement and you're going to store the keywords. So, let's just say that might be a cost of nothing because you already have the place that you're living in, which is not usually the case, by the way. We're just being generous. We're going to be the most generous that we can. But now you're also going to pay tariffs or import fees, which let's just pretend we're in Canada, and let's just pretend I'm talking even Canadian dollars.
But I can tell you right now, if everything is properly labeled and claimed, you will be paying minimum 13% uh or sorry, no, not 13. I think it's 10% for some of this stuff.
depending on where you are in the world matters. So, right away we're going to increase this to like $110,000.
So, now what? We're at $110,000 for running something in stock.
So, the next thing you have to worry about is creating marketing, which is not free. Marketing takes a lot of time.
Sending this out to people takes a lot of time.
So, let's call this $5,000 of marketing.
So, now we're up to $115,000.
Um, and this is just like the light things.
Now, we're going to have to take time and we're going to have to buy a Shopify account and a website and get all this other stuff up and running. And we're gonna have some, let's just call it general overhead, which is a yearly fee, but let's just call that a thousand bucks. So, another thousand bucks you're going to be spending. We're up to 116 grand.
And now, the part that matters the most is how long will your stock sit there?
If the answer is your stock's going to sit there for half a year, then you're not doing much. You're going to have to wait until this is sold, right?
Because a lot of the times people will take a business loan or some sort of loan out to get this $116,000 mark, which means they're most likely going to be paying back whatever loan they had.
And yeah, I'm being extremely generous.
I'm not talking about anything else either, like not shipping fees, not potential mistakes that happen during shipping, not customer service.
And this is with the expectation that has come over the years that most keyboard vendors shouldn't be making a lot of money because we have to not kid ourselves. A lot of people expect keyboard vendors to not make a lot of money. Even small designers, they there's been this like weird expectation, which I know where it stems from, that nothing should have large margins. So, let's just say out of those 250 units sold, let's just say that the the cost of $200 per keyboard, let's just be stupidly generous even here and call them 30% margin, which is what almost like let's just say what 240. Let's just say $245.
So, you're making a $45 profit off 200 units or 250 units that sold over the the course of the year. You've only made 11 grand. So, right now, you've put in $116,000 and you've made 11 grand. And again, a lot of people don't expect large margins with keyboards.
Realistically, for that $200 keyboard, I would say again, you don't know the speed in which they would sell, the more safer margin would be almost triple that. But again, because of the expectations and keyboards, vendors don't run at that.
They they don't they run at really slim margins. And you know what's crazy? Even if a handful of those 250 imaginary keyboards need replacements, you're just this $11,000 that you made just isn't cutting it. Like it's not a living wage off of one big investment for of a project that takes crazy amount of time to do, right? But this is why group buys are done is because this makes no sense for the average person.
It makes zero sense. And I can tell you right now, a lot of vendors and that we've seen fail don't look at the larger picture when it comes to vendoring products.
Like they don't they they just kind of like jump the gun. They think they can do it and then they try to manage in stock and don't realize how much of a pain in the ass it is for a non-established business.
But that's at the end of the day, this is why group buys I don't think are ever going to go away in the hobby. Uh, we've seen the group eye model slightly change over the years. Like Novel Keys does pre-orders and they guarantee that everything will be made and they'll hang on to the stock. But as I've shown you guys, it's not always fun hanging on to the stock.
It's so hard to do things for the love of the game unless it's only for a small group of everyone. Yep. Exactly.
So, it's it's tough and this is why like it's just hard to explain to people.
Sounds good, Alex. Uh, when do we start?
It's tough, right? It's always going to be a little bit more of a a difficult thing to kind of like show people, right?
Have people call bull a scam, which is ridiculous. It is ridiculous in a lot of ways.
Yeah, I I agree with Jingi on this. And this is why over the years I've been very like adamant about like you can do whatever you want by supporting scammers or not scammers, flippers rather, or uh clone clones of things. Technically, they're scammers too. Uh, at the end of the day though, it's already tough to run a successful business and do it with slimmer margins.
I honestly don't know how Neo did it.
I'll try to explain how Neo did it.
Neo sells you a keyboard for, let's just say, 150 bucks, right? That's the the MSRP.
But NEO also has a 10,000 minimum sometimes.
Maybe even more than that. Honestly, I don't [ __ ] know. Let's Let's just even go really low and do like 7,500 units.
Um, they don't actually have to worry about the factory making money because they are the factory.
So, what happens is they can they can make the keyboard probably like that $150 keyboard they made you with all the parts included that might even cost let's just even be like kind of high and let's just h 100red bucks per keyboard. So, they're able to make all those things um and then make $50 a unit, which is, you know, 33. It's it's one-third of what the cost might be.
And it's not bad, right? It's really not that bad. Alex forgot the QC cat tax in his breakdown.
Yeah, there's also QC. There's tons of stuff we didn't mention. So, they're making pretty good margin. And who knows, they might even be able to make 15,000 units, which is not unheard of, and maybe make them for $50 a piece and make a hundred bucks a unit.
We don't know because we don't have any example of like what they're selling for or the like their their scale of their operation. But no way Neo makes that much per unit.
Um you might be surprised.
It is truly like what Silver just said the volume in which they are producing things will matter the most. And don't forget when we do keyboards, whether over the years it's been DDS, I don't know, STR, whatever other Hungu, like whatever manufacturer you want to talk about, they need to make money.
So if if their machining and stuff and the materials only cost them 50 bucks, they need money for running the CNC for their labor.
They might double the price.
It's why you see Neo so big on margin or marketing because they need the volume.
Yes.
1,5 wait 150,000 MOQ for schema. Gez.
But anyways, it's the magic of scaling, right? Because even um even in keyboards, the moment you break like for example, there are there are price breaks at when you hit like a,000 units, there are price breaks when you hit,500 units. Maybe the factory will be like, "Well, you know what? For 2,000 units, it's worth our time."
It's worse comments when you always see $500 for 50 or for 50 bucks of material.
Yeah.
Anyways, um that's kind of the the long of all this. There are tons of things that we're neglecting to mention as well. Um and you you know, maybe NEO isn't making 33% profit. Maybe they're making 25. But the point is their their scale is humongous compared to what we can do. And this is why they've been hyper competitive with pricing versus everyone else.
No one's doing scale like Neo is right now.
But as Bull said, if we want to dive into other costs of things, there's QC costs. There's um believe it or not, there are shipping costs you might eat.
There are other fees that might pop up when it comes to importing goods.
Shipping from the factory is insane.
Yep, there's tons of stuff. And again, it's it's very complex. Like on a very very very small scale, let me explain mantas.
I received like 15 mantas total. All right.
in two in two separate shipments. So, only talk about even one of my shipments of mantas, which was like 10 mantas, okay?
10 mantas from the factory to me, I had to pay something like two 200 bucks or something in fees on 10 units.
I didn't like obviously we we try to like think about that in advance. Um but that's not the customer isn't paying that at that point there because they've already purchased the board. But like in the event that I'm doing in stock somehow that would have to be reflected into the price.
Unfortunately, that's just something I had to eat. And I'm sure Bull does I'm not sure if America has to do the same thing, but Bull might be doing the same thing. Other vendors might be doing the same thing. But there's a lot of extra things that might pop up.
But anyways, the long to this as well is that's why sometimes and I get quite passionate about this when some people are kind of humming and hawing saying that like a project isn't worth the money or not so much worth the money but like a vendor shouldn't be making X Y and Z for whatever reason.
I sometimes go like, well, in this case here, it probably makes sense. And it's not something that's, oh [ __ ] I clicked the wrong button. It's not something that's like easy to talk about, but I think it's almost like irresponsible for vendors to run on slim margins. You're you're just going to screw yourself over in the long run, like completely.
Squadron of manthas. True. I almost read about that.
No wonder instock extras have a higher price than GB prices generally. Well, instruct in stock extras are part of the risk factor of the profit for the group buy. So, let's just say you make $5,000 of profit for the group buy and you end up buying an extra 10 units that might cost 300 bucks each.
Well, you put $3,000 back into investment for the project. So right now like you're kind of running on slim margin like you're running very slim like very lightweight for being able to help people assuming that none of those units sell. And that's why like those extra units will be a bit more. It also is an incentive to kind of be like an early adopter or early supporter when it comes to like a group buy model if that makes sense.
back to grants business have to operate. I owe motive an apology.
Yeah, but also like I told you guys too, there's been plenty of times where we can call out people for making a product that's overpriced. Absolutely. I'm just talking about the grand scheme of things like the businesses have to like for example I think mode's a great example of things.
Mode is a business that I feel like got tons of slack over the years or tons of [ __ ] rather.
the grand schema of things. I like that.
I like that a lot.
Uh it's like model train model steam trains. In Australia, the hobby isn't as big and they can be done on scale. They do runs like 100 units and charge 800 bucks to a consumer. In the UK, however, they're very popular and do runs of 3,000 units. Yeah, it's like US versus China. Exa Exactly that, too.
It's why you can find keywords for cheaper in China because they don't have to import them anywhere because they're being made there. And then on top of that, the scale of which people are buying is a lot higher.
Anyways, I hope this was insightful. We can we can move on to topics now, different topics if you guys want.
There's a lot more information and maybe we can have Mr. Bull on one day. But cameras, no, I'm depressed about cameras right now.
Hi, sorry for interrupting. Uh, torn between the Neo75 and M1 VR TMR for my first custom build, but I heard bad things about the TMR. So, the only negative thing I can really tell you about TMR right now is I don't know all the details about this, but from what I understand TMR has higher latency in some in some cases for the I guess magnetic portion of it. I don't know how true that is. Um, I would say the Neo75, like doing MX builds will get you 90% to to where you want to go anyways. And I think you'll probably like the Neo board more.
I think that might be the right answer for you.
But yeah, trampoline. I'm still um I'm still a little bit bummed about.
Long story short, I just really wanted to buy a new camera for myself because I really want to do macro photography again, but it doesn't really seem feasible at the moment. I don't get the money to do so. Big reason you don't see USA sourced and manued boards, they typically are more expensive and most consumers are willing to pay or aren't willing to pay. Uh the mid.1, the mid one was the example of that.
Uh love your content, man. thinking about grabbing a Neo 60 core from EU for about $200 uh dollars after tax to Scandinavia. Is it still worth? I think so. Absolutely. And also, thank you so much for being here, man. Really appreciate that. I think 200 bucks for a Neo65 core or Neo 60 core is fine, especially cuz you're importing it somewhere. Like, you're fine, dude. I think that's a fantastic price.
Other content on the Heisen, I'm assuming it's TMR make it seem like MX and HD switches can be used at the same time. I'm confused. They cannot. I tried to make that very apparent in my review of it as well. They cannot be used at the exact same time.
What the hell? Oh, this fell off.
Margins are also relative to local economies. Yes, exactly that, too.
Yeah. I hope that was a fun conversation.
I don't have any PON foam to use today.
I can double check. Maybe I do.
Maybe. Keyword.
Actually, you know what? I thought I removed Oh, no. I removed it in this one. I might remove the silicone standoffs in this one here.
Thank you, [ __ ] Appreciate you, man.
Much love from Toronto as well. I will source some PON gaskets this week. Also, hi, Pocket. How you doing?
Didn't see you there on YouTube.
Dying of thirst tonight. I'm going to drink some water.
Um, one second, guys.
I might have to go help my girlfriend really quick about something and then I'll come back to build the rest of this board. You see the gasket people were showing in Mantich chat. Dude, I'm like hella impressed by that.
Everyone's doing such detailed homework about the gaskets. I'm so impressed.
Take your pono back. No, I think she'll get upsetta with me. I can't, man.
I cannot uh Okay, I think she's fine right now.
Mrs. Odos, maybe soon. Maybe.
Uh, she needs toilet paper for real. No.
No. Netflix kicked her out. The only streaming service we have, honestly, it kicks us out all the [ __ ] time, dude.
All the time.
might replace the space bar for this.
Whoa. Is that for my mom, too? Yeah, even like on our TV, it just constantly signs her out.
Honestly, we I don't even remember the password. We have it saved on like one of our password things. Um except it asks it asks for like the verification on my phone because I don't think she has it on her phone. So, I always have to like go into my phone and like type in the code or whatever to like verify it or whatever, you know, because it's like I don't think in Canada we have static IPs by default. I think we have dynamic IPs. So, every now and then it like wants to verify that you're part of the household because you know how Netflix does that now, which is also a pain in the [ __ ] ass. It like tries to keep everything under one IP address.
Mine did that two days ago. We only watch it on one TV. It's super irritating.
Hulu does that, too. I miss what happened with the unknown. Oh, I didn't really like them. I need I thought they were uh rather like metallic in some some areas.
Yeah, I put I I wanted to do granite anyways. So, I'm kind of happy we we went to this route. I think I'm also going to get rid of the silicone standoffs.
I actually prefer the mo or the mo the manta without the silicone standoffs.
They're pretty easy to get rid of. All you do is have to kind of like just grab them out this way here. Just wiggle them out and then they just pop right out.
They have a very light adhesive on the bottom, but they're they literally friction fit back in when you want them.
mode explodes.
That'd be cool. You know what? Maybe I'll should I leave the corners? Nah.
Why do you like it that way? I find without the silicone um you can get a little bit more of a sharper top out.
Maybe less less vibration kind of happens. But yeah, these are really easy. If you guys want to take these out, go for it. They're stupid easy to put it back in and out. All you do is push them back in and then just go ahead and take them back out. Like they're they're kind of a dynamic part. You don't really need to worry about them like falling in or out or anything like that.
Want to buy more mantis, huh? Oh, yeah.
We I need to talk to Bull about that. I thought I did talk to Bull about that.
Ah, is bull there?
Bull. People want manta pouches.
Make them in different colors. Yeah, that'd be nice, too.
A Manta 75. I said this before. I really don't know if we're ever going to go down that route. I don't think the Manta would look good larger than a 65. A Manta, a Manta 75 bowl. I don't know.
I don't think a Mant would look good as a DKL.
I'm like not sold on that. Excuse me.
What are you doing, you stupid wire?
There we go. We're better now.
Yeah.
I'm going to be honest, guys. I think the only proportion that really works for the Manta is the 65.
I can't picture this as like a 75% layout or TKL with this huge fin on the back. It would just be too large. Like I think I think it would look silly.
I don't know.
If we did a TKL, it' have to be a different design.
A 40% might look cool, but it also would just be really [ __ ] expensive.
I don't know if a 40% Manta makes sense to even bother to run, to be honest.
Schema might make more sense than the Mana.
Bulls allergic to TKL's.
I mean, Bulls helped create a bunch. I don't know if Have you made your own TKL bull? I know Bulls helped create a whole bunch of TKL, though.
It's real fake news.
Bill Banta and you did a great job.
Thank you.
You two are going to cook sick new designs. Not everything needs to be a series. Yeah, I mean the schema is a play on the manta, right? I like the schema. The schema is meant to be simple on purpose. We went into the schema making it simple.
The next thing we work on, we'll make something else crazy cool.
Maybe it'll be another expensive option.
Maybe it'll be something like balls to the wall like Manta and it's Finn.
But we don't know yet because we're not at that stage yet. We're still working on schema. That's our next project. And then we will work on our next board.
Promise 80 v2.
Okay. I don't know if I'm going to stick with the granite space bar, but let's see.
Probably not. Granite space bar is a little too flat. I might want something a bit more poppy.
Oh my god. I don't even want to picture a manta fullsize dude. That that would be insanely expensive, man.
We've told you guys the fin of the mant was like what's the percentage again? Bolts like 60 to 70% of the cost already. It was crazy how much the fin was. Now imagine doing that on a larger scale. I didn't say 67. I said 60 or 70. It's different.
Come on.
It be different, bro.
This one's already way better than the other one.
I think 55% of the part cost. There you guys go. Close to 60. Close enough.
Yeah, that's crazy, right?
What's this?
The Finn would look extra stupid on something like that.
Nuh-uh.
That'd be the fun of it. Do you want to pay for the prototype and it if you're down, me and Bull will do a do a uh Bull, did you hear that? And it's going to pay for the prototype of something like that.
send invoice like a 10. I don't think that's 10,000.
I think that might be more. I legitimately think that might be like Well, how if you had to guess for even the min minimum amount of prototypes you need to do?
How much would you think the compensator would be with a fin for prototypes just to just to get proof of concept done? Not fast proto, like legit protos.
I think it's more than $10,000.
It might even be double that.
We can kickstart it.
You think 7 to 9K?
Damn. I think it'd be like 15 just to do one one or two units of that.
Unless you mean a piece.
Model it and see what STR says. I think they'll laugh at us.
No, you'd have to you'd have to do it in pieces. I think I I don't know. I don't know if that would be viable for something like that. What am I buying?
You know the compensator? A manta version of it with a giant fin.
Oh yeah, dude. I love the alphas already. Big fan of this. I miss typing on the granit.
If you could find a guy to 3D print it, it might be cheaper.
That's on my bucket list soon. Eh, I want to pick up a 3D printer.
Bull has one and sometimes when we when we do things together and design things, Bull 3D prints things and I always get a little jealous and I want to leave the call. Every time he says, "I'm gonna go 3D print it." I huff and puff. I said, "Fuck this guy. He is a 3D printer."
Memorial Day sale today for some 3D printers. H I legitimately have other things I need to prioritize. It's on the wish list.
Actually, you know what? Maybe I don't mind the granite space bar. All right, let's see what this sounds like with granite now.
No, I want to switch space bars, but I love the alphas.
Yeah, it's too slappy the space bar. I want something a bit more full and sharp.
And then we'll round off the sound here.
Compare the two. Yeah. Hold on. Let me get a Let's get a milky yellow. I feel like milky yellow is the right choice here.
Does anyone know someone that does color matched cerak coating? I'm trying to do a board to match your energy. I have Sterling's blessing by the way.
>> I have no clue who's doing cerak coating anymore. Nobody that I know. You'd have to go to like a gun shop. Shiva. Does Shiva do coding.
Perfect.
Is the space bar still a little bit too bright for this? I love the alphas on this though.
[ __ ] You know what? Maybe we do a blue cheese. Is Oz here? I'm gonna use one of his blue cheese switches. Quick.
A blue cheese space bar. Maybe.
I love the alphas on this though.
I don't want to give them up.
Yeah, that's perfect.
I do like the way this sounds overall.
Space bar is really slappy with the carbon fiber, huh? I haven't used a carbon fiber plate for the mant in a hot minute.
Ooh, I do like this.
I've always been a thy deep sound guy.
This is just so clean.
I'm curious how this would sound even with maybe the O-ring would be really nice in this too. Actually, I might switch to the O-ring right now.
We chilling, right guys? We not in a rush.
I I do want to try O-ring though.
That's a Cheese V2 space bar.
Cheese V2 are special, man. They are super duper special.
Adam has to go in like five minutes.
Okay, we'll we'll speed it up for Mr. Adam.
I don't want to I don't want to waste his time. Uh, your content has helped me a lot. Back in 2023, I lost interest in the hobby, but after watching your recent videos, I built two new boards.
Solaris and Neo, hell yeah, man. The Neo 60CU is an excellent venture back into the hobby. Also, Solaris is a great choice, too.
I was little jig going to do this after the config. Sleep. Adam, if you need to sleep, just go to sleep. Good night, Adam. You take care, friend.
>> Adam just said he wants to sleep call with you, Alex.
>> He did not. Did he? I'm streaming right now. Adam, this guy FaceTime me right now.
Oh my gosh.
All right, let me go get the O-ring for this. I don't think I have an O-ring actually. Would I have an O-ring in this? I don't think I do.
No. What's in my other compartment BRB? One sec. Let me get the O-ring for this.
I have to get it out of this case.
Good night though, Adam. Have a good sleep.
Where do you buy aftermarket O-rings? I I've always got them from Mecklland when I need them. I don't know who else sells O-rings at this point here, but Mechan's always been my choice.
They've always been pretty solid.
What else I kind of want to try? Where did I put all those things? I want to try putting one of those silicone sheets inside, too.
I wonder if that does anything different to the sound. Haven't really experimented with that.
Let me go get one.
Find where I put that one that I have.
Um, Grave Shell, Grave Shift does sell O-rings, too. You could always go for them.
I don't mind using Grape Shift.
Let's try this out.
See if this makes any I don't even know.
I've never even tried yet.
Which way does this go?
Yes, this way I think.
Other way.
Um, what happened? Keyboard go tippity tap. Oh yeah, I don't think it'll read because the word [ __ ] But thank you, Gingi. Appreciate you, dude.
Taking off right now. You have a good one.
All right, let's try our O-ring.
1 hour flight time. See you here in a bit. Have a safe flight.
Make sure this is all pressed in nicely.
Wedding ring mounted board next.
That would be something.
Oo, I'm excited to try this. This seems like a good combo right now.
Grave shift or did you buy a grave shift one? Been thinking about getting granates, but I wanted to know if the factory lube on them is good. Um, I'm the wrong person to ask because I designed the granite switches or helped ma make them, but I was also very involved in criticizing the the lubing that they did for the prelubed granit.
The the lubing process for them is very very good. The person who is in charge of making sure that happened was very meticulous. I would go out on a limb and say that they're extremely good again with some biases obviously in there.
Oh, this is so much dude. I love this combo right now. This is it. I think we hit the jackpot here.
Doing the O-ring. Oh, I think I'm going to get rid of the silicone inside. I don't think we need that at all.
Yeah. So, the lubing process Icorus for the granite is a bit different than normal. It's done with a dry lubricant.
Um, which is a little bit different than kind of just slopping on some 205 or whatever lube they use.
It's a lot more even. The goal was consistency.
I did O-ring in it.
Oh, that sounds so good.
ALL RIGHT. VERY HAPPY WITH O-RING WITH THE GRANITE ALPHAS. And I actually really like that. It's a little It's a little deep. Maybe I'll switch back to the the granite, but it's different from the other builds that I have.
[ __ ] that sounds really nice. I'm really happy with this build.
Um, I don't know if I want to I don't know. I'm kind of happy with this space bar right now. I don't know if I want to swap right this instant to be honest with you. I'm like pretty damn happy with this.
You know, that's two boards now for Manta out of all the ones I've built that I've been like uber happy with. The O-ring, the grommets are still really nice if you want a bit more like ump, but the O-ring has that nice fullness, has that isolation.
Damn. I'm super duper happy with this.
It turned out so good.
Versus versus the other one, too. if you guys want to go versus the other Manta here.
So, this is with TTC XPTts, different plateau, and different switches.
I still think I think this one here is a little bit nicer space bar wise, but they're very different, which I really like.
I'm not sure if I like the carbon fiber aluminum plate more. I think the aluminum I have the slight edge to.
Yeah, the MX2As are really nice. I know.
I got to do another MX2A with aluminum build.
It's such a versatile board. I agree.
It's so It's so versatile.
All right. Well, that was pretty much the stream today. A little bit longer, but I really wanted to play around with this. I've been itching to, like I said, put together this plate and PCB for a hot minute now. So, thanks for sticking with, guys.
All right, let's go find someone to raid.
Thank you though, Bri. I appreciate that, too. Let's find someone to raid.
Simon's streaming.
I don't know what Simon's doing. Let's go raid Simon.
Uh, what do you think of Keyeek Blue Cheese versus White Two? I love I'm I'm a sucker for blue cheese every single time, man. Ever. Like my answer is always going to be blue cheese when it comes to the Kiki lineup.
They're so good.
Check DMs. Will do Drew. All right, guys. Have a good night. Stay hydrated.
Get some sleep. Um yeah, that's it. Sweet dreams. Bye, everybody. Good night. Love you.
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