Definitely. When you're buying a custom keyboard you have to keep in mind that it's not all black and white. Expensive doesn't mean better, more complex doesn't mean better and manufactured outside of China doesn't mean better.

Take your time picking out a keyboard and make sure it's coming from a reputable makers that has made good keyboards in the past. Some great examples are Geonworks, westfoxtrot, ai03, TGR, Vertex and SingaKBD. The board you're buying doesn't necessarily have to come from a well known maker, but it really helps if you're new and can't recognize good projects yourself quite yet. Even if you find something from a less known/new maker, you can always ask around and see what other hobbyists here on Reddit or Discord think of it. Getting a few opinions before you dive into something is always a good idea, especially since keyboards are a big investment in terms of time (if you're joining a GB) and money.

> Every now and then I come across boards like Keycult and even the Frogs in which you can tell the level of quality is different.

The thing you're noticing is probably the quality and attention to detail in the design process of the keyboard, not the manufacturing part.

A mill in China and a mill in the USA will do the job equally well. Any CNC machine that is capable of milling a keyboard will do the job pretty much exactly as good as the next one. The finishing process (mediablast, anodization, coating etc.) is what you'll notice most across different keyboard manufacturers.

Pizza Keyboards manufacture their keyboards in Italy. At least they did with their latest board, the Pizza 65 which had 2 rounds.

Tvrd Rad manufactures their boards in Serbia.

Arslock designed the The Fossil Fullsize and Palmetto 60% which were both made in the USA.

There's also a bunch of old school Korean makers that made their keyboards locally in Korea like OTD boards, LZ, Duck, Kmac etc.

Most, if not all, custom keyboards are programmable so you could bind the Windows key anywhere else or even on a layer.

60, 65 and TKL are probably the most popular form factors but that doesn't mean they're better than anything else for your use case. It's all preference at the end of the day.

GMK group buys take a while. There's an ETA listed on every GMK set during GB so you knew what you were getting into when you originally purchased the keyset.

It's completely understandable to prefer in-stock stuff, especially if you're new to the hobby but that's just not realistic for the high-end enthusiast stuff.

Flair checks out.

The sound is definitely a love it or hate it thing. Nothing like a keyboard that sings for you while you type!

Awesome find! I'm typing on a model M right now and it's a much nicer experience than any MX tactile I've tried.

Flex cuts can be nice but a lot of PCBs nowadays have flex cuts because it's the cool thing to do.

The current meta is all about flex and bounce, so having soft plastic plates and a ton of flex cuts on the PCB is going to make the board jump up and down when you're typing on it. This can feel over the top and since all the energy is used up to move the PCB/plate assembly, the sound can be quite underwhelming. Lots of people nowadays don't understand that more of something isn't always better.

Instead of talking about the keyboard feel, people (reviewers and content creators especially) do a "flex test" where they push down on the keyboard with 5 kg of force and showcase how much the plate/PCB assembly bends. That doesn't really give you an idea of how it is to type on the keyboard, but designers and manufacturers accommodate their designs to these things because they think it matters.

There is nothing inherently wrong with flex cuts, but depending on the execution you can really see who's doing it for a nicer typing feel and who's doing it to sell more keyboards because it's the current hype thing.

In terms of the mechanism, not really. They're surprisingly similar to a Cherry MX switch.

It uses Cherry M8 switches.

Put it in rice.

This.

People helping out in the questions thread aren't certified keyboard professionals that know everything. We're just enthusiasts like yourself that take the time out of our day to help out new people in the community.

Why would it be useless? There's tons of great people regularly helping newcomers.

They're called ASCII sublegends.

You can find more info in the Geekhack thread for this keycap set.

Custom keyboards are fully programmable. Control key can be anywhere you want.

You'll obviously struggle with finding open group buys if you don't know where to look for them. It also doesn't help that lost of keyboard group buys are very limited in time and quantity.

Geekhack is where most keyboard and keycap interest checks (IC) and group buys (GB) are announced. It's an ugly old forum but it's the preferred hobbyist place for posting and keeping up with upcoming projects. This is the best place to keep yourself informed about all kinds of projects.

There's also a good amount of projects that are announced solely on the designer's Discord server, this is more common for keyboards than it is for keycaps. Figure out which designers you like and join their Discord servers.

Completely subjective.

Although we all know that Beamsprings are the best sounding switches.