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LoganJFisher OP t1_iy2hnab wrote

Ugh, that keyboard sounds amazing. I just wish it wasn't south facing. It's so rare for north-facing to result in conflicts anymore as most decent switches have long stems, so it's just taking a loss on the LED lighting for nothing.

Also wish it came in their midnight blue.

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HolyShiits t1_iy2lwjo wrote

Most custom keycaps are not shine through anyway, not a big loss for anyone who's using keycaps like gmk, epbt and such.

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LoganJFisher OP t1_iy2mlby wrote

Sure, but if you're going to have LEDs on the PCB, they should probably be put to good use, right? Even if most keycaps don't support shine through, it's silly to ignore those that do.

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rafale77 t1_iy5zxhy wrote

You took a lot of downvotes there (I tried to compensate a bit) in spite of making total sense. Lots of people here are so deep in their rabbit hole and have so much confirmation bias that they can't bear to hear the truth.

South facing is not just a problem for shine through keycaps which many will argue are rare and of poor mostly poor quality. I found a couple which are actually very decent but I admit they are rare. South facing is also horrible for keyboard lighting pattern between the keycaps. It is gross to the point where it makes any lighting of the keyboard practically unusable: The bottom row shines blinds you while the second row is darker than the first and third etc... I completely understand if the board has no LED but selling that as a "feature" like what so many brands like Keychron and now Akko do makes me want to vomit.

All this for what benefit? Compatibility with expensive but defective keycaps called GMK which use a low profile design yielding poor sounds solved by thickening of the keycaps and creating some marginal interference with some specific switches. That's the definition of a rabbit hole right there... Nearly everyone in the community keep on repeating what they have heard ("South facing is better and for enthusiasts") without trying it for themselves. I tested it for myself with a lot of Cherry profile caps and the interference is extremely rare and very easily solved in multiple fashion. The South facing boards trend is the result of a phenomenon of mass stupidity.

I too have been looking for a quality aluminum keeb which to my chagrin doesn't or no longer exist because every enthusiast keeb now is south facing. I ended up having to build my own...

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LoganJFisher OP t1_iy6175x wrote

My alpha and arrow keycaps are solid stainless steel with shine through (through a piece of plastic inside acting as a diffuser). I dare anyone to say they're of poor quality. Haha.

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rafale77 t1_iy63lbk wrote

We might be using the same keycaps... They are thockier than any plastic ones will ever be. ;-)

I even got a larger set than the alphas and am having some other backlit metal caps custom made. Planning to showcase the final product after I get them.

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LoganJFisher OP t1_iy64jta wrote

I would love to get matching caps for the number row, grave/tilde, minus/underscore, equal/plus, bracket left/curly bracket left, bracket right/curly bracket right, semicolon/colon, apostrophe/quote, comma/angled bracket left, period/angled bracket right, forward slash/question mark, and backslash/vertical bar keys. Steel for all the typable symbols.

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rafale77 t1_iy65q4u wrote

I pulled mine from a keyboard:

Do a search on Amazon for "Gamcap keyboard".
If you want other colors, I think Hallsen is the other brand.

They keyboard suck but the keycaps are from the same manufacturer as the Teamwolves.

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LoganJFisher OP t1_iy66dkw wrote

Ah, I've seen that. I can't say I'm a fan of those keycaps. Their profile just looks really weird to me.

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rafale77 t1_iy67479 wrote

They are renders... If you get them, you will see that they are actually OEM and identical to the Teamwolves except for the font as I have seen many different font versions. Mine was completely identical.

Check out what they look like on my post here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgetKeebs/comments/y937yf/numpad_addition_not_quite_the_end_game_yet/

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