Скачать или смотреть First build of 2023: Proud themed FBTKL for a friend

When I heard KeebsForAll (KFA) was fielding a budget friendly TKL around the Jane V2 CE plate, I was interested and hopeful. Glad I decided to jump on it and then also had the inspiration to build this theme for a good friend of mine.

This was recorded on my Neumann KM-184 into the Audient ID-14 with no adjustments done in post.

First the bad...this took longer than anticipated to finish production. Not that I cared much as I'm well behind on builds anyways, but I know a lot of people on the discord and other socials were upset. Second thing, I did have an issue with the spacebar initially sounding kind of dog-water. Not sure if it is just for this case or in some builds, but I had to work and rebuild this FBTKL to get it to sound like what I wanted. You might even note the different spacebar al a 21KB instead of an ePBT. It just needed to happen and I'm not even sure why.

I did encounter an odd experience where the pc plate that I initially built with on steam made the KFA Hotswap PCB and plate assembly go concave. And like not by a little either, by about a millimeter between high and low points where right and left ends low while the middle was about a millimeter higher. Not sure of the actual issue as I had no issue building my KFE CE with the sister plate that this pc plate came from.

I then tried the KFA PCB with the included FR4 plate. It was less than .5mm concave, but I was still getting strange sounds of the spacebar and plate having a bad time. Gummy O Ring or Top Mount were about as poor as the other and the pc plate. The spacebar sounded dead or like it was getting plate interference.

So I pulled out a Jels88 PCB and Hiney HR4 half plate and soldered the assembly. After installation there wasn't much but the occasional bad spacebar sound even after the inclusion of the case damper and force break. I did end up swapping spacebars from ePBT, to other ePBT bars, to GMK, and finally to 21KB. Finally I was getting the woody and nice sounding Jane V2 CE spacebar that I really liked from my KFE CE.

What then is to like about this keyboard? For the price I don't think you could get board using the Jane plate. Yes someone new to the hobby might not care, but to me as an enthusiast it really is nice to have an accessible way for people to get further into the hobby and enjoy such details too. I'm way too disconnected from budget stuff to know if this is good value for money, so I'll just default to my enthusiast sensibilities which are quite happy after I made the spacebar behave itself.

Oh and a bit about the theme: Trans Flag inspired look using ePBT Acid House & Sweet Girl with ePBT BoW for the middle white strip. As I mentioned I have built this for a friend. Originally I thought this would be something like GMK Grand Prix themed as my friend is into motor sports and e-sport sim racing, but then I learned that she had come out as trans. I knew I wanted to support in whatever way I could so what better way than to give her a keyboard celebrating who she is.

FreeBird TKL by KeebsForAll
Jels88 PCB 1.6mm, Hiney FR4 half plate, and standard gummy o ring
Korbs switches: lubed with Krytox 205g0, swapped to 60g TX XL springs (50:50 mix of 205g2 and GPL 107), and TX films
BCP on spacebar (205g0)
TX Clip-Ins lubed with Krytox 205g0 and XHT-BDZ on wires (TX Long Pole stab on spacebar)
Keycaps: ePBT Acid House & Sweet Girl, ePBT BoW, and 21KB spacebar