g0tlib wrote: 25 Feb 2019, 15:27
Hello everyone,
First of all excuse me if I make any English mistake since it's not my mother tongue.
I purchased a brand new Topre Realforce R2 PFU limited edition (R2TLSA-US4-BK-L) with grey and blue keycaps (apaprently it was made with or for Leopold but it's still a Realforce).
It's awesome and silent but I only have one problem with it, I don't know if it's a defect of my particular unit or not.
In fact the right half of the space bar is silent but when I hit it on its left side, it makes a bit of a clacky sound. In short; the space bar is not consistent. It's not bothering me when I'm typing since I use my right thumb to hit space, but when I'm gaming it is a bit noisy since I use my left thumb to jump, which is a shame for such a silent keyboard. Here's the video of how it sounds :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansBbSe ... e=youtu.be
I asked the seller on ebay (widebasket) about it and he replied :
"According to the manufacturer, it was Normal.
The long key (Enter, Backspace, Shit ..) of this keyboard has the stabilizers with a plastic cylinder and a steel fixture.
In the stabilizer, there may be a fricative sound when you press the space bar.
Therefore it is structural, not defective.
The other keyboards are the same. "
He also told me that it was not just sepcific to the limited editions models made for Leopold since the only thing that they changed is the color of the keycaps.
It's not that I don't trust him, but I wanted to have confirmation from people who already own the same model. Thanks
Marc
Well, I just received a Leopold R2 TKL Silent 45g keyboard from Widebasket on eBay.
Guess what? It has the same spacebar problem that you described.
The spacebar seems to bottom out when struck on the left side, and it makes a rather loud "clack" sound. This is less noticeable when struck in the middle or on the right, but if the spacebar is struck forcibly anywhere along its length, it bottoms out with a clack.
In contrast, the spacebar on my Realforce R2 PFU Edition silent 45g keyboard is quiet no matter where it is struck.
This is only a sample of 2 and so a statistician would say that we could not conclude that this is representative of the entire population of these keyboards. On the other hand, I do not much believe in coincidences. I think it is a design flaw or perhaps a quality control issue. Not good when you pay nearly $400 for keyboard!
There might be some simple remedies for this, however. One possibility would be to remove the spacebar and add some self-adhesive polyurethane foam to the plate where the spacebar makes contact.** Another thing that might help is to swap out the auxiliary return spring for a slightly heavier spring. If these tricks do not work, it might require opening up the keyboard and checking the stabilizer alignment. When I have had a chance to try these potential fixes, I will report back on how well they worked.
I am also somewhat disappointed in the actual colors of the Leopold keycaps. From the photos and renders, I was expecting a lighter background on the alpha keys and a lighter and more vivid shade of blue on the modifiers. The colors on the Leopold version look muddy. I prefer the colors of the Topre keycap sets that I put on my RF R2 PFU board.
Because of the issues with the spacebar and the keycap colors, I now wish I had purchased another Realforce R2 PFU from Amazon -- it would have been $50 less expensive and presumably would not have had the detractions of the Leopold board. It would be a hassle to return the Leopold model to Korea, and I am not sure if returns would be accepted for seemingly minor quibbles. So, I will keep the board and see if I can alleviate the spacebar problem.**
BTW, the Enter and Right Shift have a bit of a rattle, and this is also a problem with the RF R2 PFU board. Keyboards ought to be designed so that there are no keys large enough to require stabilizers! However, the stabilized keys on my Northgate Omnikey 101 (SKCM White Alps switches) have wire stabilizers and they do not rattle.
** EDIT: Okay, today I removed the spacebar and adjacent modifier keycaps. I applied strips of very thin self-adhesive polyurethane form to the top plate between the spacebar switch and the stabilizer on each side. I also applied the same material between the stabilizer and the adjacent modifier switch on each side. In addition, while holding the stabilizer in the up-position on each side, I applied some SuperLube 21010 synthetic grease so that it reached the stabilizer wire underneath the plate.
This treatment seems to have worked. The stabilizer clack is now gone. This fix was fairly easy and quick, but I should think that Leopold should have done something like this in the first place. The keyboard cost nearly $400, and it was billed as a silenced model. For such an expensive board that is supposedly silenced, Leopold could at least have added some shock-absorbing material under the spacebar or used a different design of spacebar that would not make contact with the top plate.
