Convince me to not buy the Filco Ninja Majestouch 2

[vometia]

New keys arrived and have been installed. I kinda like them, but I must admit I'm not totally convinced: the quality is obviously very much better than the regular Filco keys, but the curvature is much less than I'd expected, the alpha keys being totally flat as far as I can tell. I may get used to it, but it feels a bit awkward and gappy for someone who's spent years on a Model M with its curved back plate.

They're not totally perfect either, the backspace key being at a slightly jaunty angle: only a degree or two anticlockwise, but visually noticeable, and the spacebar has a strange hollow "clonk" to it which isn't entirely awesome.

Overall I'd give the Filco doubleshots 7/10: the individual key quality is very good and much better than the originals, but not everything is totally well executed and, admittedly subjectively, I'm not immediately warming to the flat profile.

[TuxKey]

i would go for the new Ducky One keyboards.

i like the fact that i have a couple of extra functions and the price is €100 for a TKL version with mx-brown and blue led.
And €80 for the one without led..

And the full size Ducky one is €100 check it out here .


checkout the functions and the nice du-sub pbt keycaps ..here is the site with more info..

but perhaps you already got the filco

[vometia]

I must admit I did wonder about the Ducky keyboards such as this one but I just got a general sort of vibe that Filco was arguably the better bet.

Anyway, a day on from getting the Filco keys and I'm kinda habituating to the "weird curvature" slightly and wondering if I might've come across as being unnecessarily unimpressed. I actually really like the keys themselves and they have a very nice retro look and feel to them: the bigger legends (would've preferred them centred, but they're still nice), the spherical shape, the overall look and the rather hard-feeling PBT (I think) make them feel very retro. As does the curve, to be honest: when it said SA I had to look it up, but I expected a strongly curved surface and hadn't considered that all the alpha keys would be the same row (row 3, IIRC) though I think My First Computer™ was very much the same.

I'd also agree with what other people have said about the keys noticeably altering the feel of the keyboard and they do give a slightly more "heavyweight" typing action, if that makes sense: I don't mean higher resistance, of course, just more "meaty". It's actually made the keyboard feel not entirely dissimilar to my Model Ms, though the somewhat higher-pitched clickiness is a give away about the MX Blues hiding in there (she says, this being her first MX keyboard, at least the first in over 20 years).

Still don't like the feel and sound of the spacebar though: both aspects make it seem a bit lightweight and hollow. Maybe I could attempt to fill it with something. Given that I am not the world's most practically adept person, I should probably leave it alone...


Edit: oh, and I've also ordered some Tai Hao Rain Drop keys in case I get fed up with white-on-black (oh alright, cream-on-dark-brown to be absolutely thingy) so it'll be interesting to compare them in terms of look, feel, sound, profile and so on.

[zslane]

According to keypuller.com, the Filco SA set is ABS (Signature Plastics only produces SA in ABS plastic) and has a row profile of 2-2-3-3-3-3.

I know what you mean about the spacebar, though for me it has always been more about the bottoming-out clack that bothered me than the hollowness. I end up putting three blue + one red O-rings (from WASDKeyboards) on the center post to help dampen the bottoming out. Filling the spacebar with adhesive-backed foam rubber strips should be pretty simple.

[vometia]

Oh, that's interesting. I dunno why I thought it was PBT; but what's more interesting is the possibility of damping the spacebar. I think I'll stick with the O-ring suggestion, at least for now, as I'm not the world's neatest person where adhesive is concerned: it'll end up on my fingers, blouse, the ceiling, carpet, the cat, anybody in my vicinity, pretty much everything other than where it's meant to be. No amount of containment will avert my adhesive-related mishaps.

[zslane]

I would recommend the kind of adhesive backed sheets of foam rubber that I used to replace the disintegrating noise-cancelling foam inside my old IBM Selectric II. You can get the sheets where you just cut it into whatever shaped strips you need, peel off the backing, and stick it onto whatever. No fuss, no muss, easy, breezy, Covergirl.

[vometia]

Any tips about where UK types might find such sheets? I'm not even sure what I should be looking for let alone where to get it...

A few days on and, other than the horrid space-bar, I've really warmed to the new Filco double-shots: they're actually really lovely keys and I don't mind the initially odd-feeling 2-2-3-3-3-3 layout: although I still don't see it being my first preference, it's not at all bad to use and the keys themselves are really top stuff. I've just compared them to some Tao Hai ABS keys which I got in Raindrop as I love the colour (odd, as I'm generally not a huge fan of cyan) and while I like the cheerful Space Cadet-esque look and they're also double-shot they're quite light-weight and clickety-sounding in comparison with the Filcos. And as much as I think I like interesting colours in theory, the 85% chocolate effect of the Filcos is much less distracting when I'm actually doing stuff that doesn't involve admiring my keyboard.

So in short, I really like them and would recommend them. The only caveats being the space-bar (I'm obviously going to have to moan about that several times) and that it's not a full SA profile, although I guess that means one can swap them about with wanton abandon. Whatever that looks like.

The MS2 itself I also love. Not much to add that I haven't already said, but I'm still appreciating its solidity and minimalism: I only mention the latter as it's a keyboard so being a keyboard is what I want it to be: I've seen other reviews where people have complained it's not backlit, doesn't have its own display and isn't a USB hub and multimedia centre, but meh, I don't want it to be those things. I just want a keyboard, and it's doing that very well.

Of course there's the matter of whether or not Cherry MX switches are one's preferred thing, and they're not bad, but they're kinda what's on offer as they're so ubiquitous. Personally I'd prefer it if someone would miraculously release Model F or beam-spring switches, but then again so would many of us and it's not happening any time soon. I'm also curious about Topre, but I'm not in a hurry to shell out £200 for the one UK/ISO layout tenkeyless I can find with keycaps I don't like if I'm not sure I'd get on with it, as I like my keys to sound clicky, whatever they feel like (my gf might like one, but even she might baulk at the black-on-black scheme). And this doesn't sound as good as an old IBM mechanical of any variety, but I have to say again that the new Filco keycaps do improve the sound a lot: okay, it's still obvious that I'm typing on MX Blues but they have a significantly more "mature" sound to them, if that makes sense.

I am curious, though: where do people get their novelty keycaps from? Being a bit of a newbie with all this sort of malarky I'm not even sure where to start looking. I am in a bit of a "maybe Amazon sells it" rut, which is where I got the Tao Hais, but y'know: Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on everything. Not yet, anyway.

[zslane]

Re: Foam sheets
If you go to just about any crafts store, you will find adhesive-backed foam sheets and/or foam "tape". Obviously you want to find something thin, 2mm or less, so that it fits inside the spacebar without too much fuss.

Re: Novelty keycaps
Novelties and artisans pretty much always come from group buys. Most group buys that don't run on MassDrop tend to be organized on GeekHack. Only 7bit seems to run full-blown keyset GBs here at Deskthority. If you missed out on the group buy for a keyset with novelties you like, then you pretty much have to find someone who wants to sell their's off.

[vometia]

I got some foam tape, perhaps unsurprisingly from Amazon. I think some experimentation will be required: first time I lined the sides with the foam which worked very well in terms of dealing with the sound, but it must've been fouling part of the switch mechanism (which I admit I haven't studied closely) as it worked okay but had an over-damped feel when bottoming out. Now I have a couple of very small pieces stuck to the top in the gaps where they fit which doesn't foul anything but works much less well with the sound (but which at least works a bit). But that's enough experimenting for today!

I'll have to keep an eye out for the group buys, then. Shame I'm not the most observant person...

[andrewjoy]

The Filco Ninja Majestouch 2 UK Layout - with Cherry MX Brown key switches.

So I'm looking to purchase my first Mechanical Keyboard. I've done a lot of research over the months (yes, months) and I think I've finally made a decision. I will be using the keyboard for typing quite fast (100+ WPM) and also FPS gaming, I don't need media keys or macro keys because my mouse can provide that. Does anyone have this keyboard and have anything negative to say about it?

Tell me even the slightest things you don't like about it. The only bad thing I've heard about it so far is that the stock keycaps can become shiny over time.

Pic of it:

get it with reds or blacks , browns suck.

cannot go wrong with a filco , very good build quality , but poor caps