Finally, after waiting months and gathering a variety of parts, my KBD75 finally arrived.

In theory, it should have been built already.

But it’s not.

As it turns out, things aren’t working out the way I wanted them to, and there are issues that can only be maybe solved by throwing more money at it.

There is an issue with the top plate that people with the early versions of this board (bought directly from KBDfans), where the stabilizer holes for the spacebar are cut incorrectly (the shape of the hole is for plate-mount stabilizers, when this keyboard uses PCB mount stabilizers), causing the stabilizer wire to strike the underside of the plate. This is most prominent when using Zeal’s screw-in stabilizers, and least prominent/non-existant when using genuine Cherry stabilizers. Want to guess which stabilizers I have and which stabilizers don’t have?

Yep. My fancy Zeal stabs are useless for this build. That’s a bit of a bummer, as they were kind of expensive for what they are.

I placed 3 different orders on 3 different websites for stabilizers just to see which will get here first. I ordered from Switchtop (whom I’ve ordered from numerous times before), Sentrant (I wanted to give them a try, as they have some interesting things coming out in the future), and Originative (whom I’ve also ordered from multiple times). All the orders are for genuine Cherry stabs, with the ones from Originative being the gold-wire type. The plan is to clip and lube before installation.

The other things I wanted to do with this build that I’m abandoning, is installing Holtites on the switch and LED holes to make it hot swappable. After trying to install Holtites on one switch, I am going to skip them. I am not comfortable with the amount of force it takes to install them, nor the heat required to soften the PCB enough to let them drop in. The one set I did install for the switch holes though, seems to work perfectly fine in testing, which is a shame.

So, while I wait on the new stabs to arrive, the keyboard I’ve been waiting for so long to arrive is going to just sit there in it’s box. It’s otherwise a nice board, and it has a nice weight to it (even without switches or the plate).

I’ll have more impressions on it once I start the build logs, but for now, I’m disappointed that I can’t build it already, but excited to build it once I get everything in.