Page 1 of 8

[Closed] Hypersphere's Topre Damping Rings - Europe GB - Shipping Now

Posted: 31 Oct 2015, 23:32
by Muirium
Closed! The rings are now all safely home in Scotland. Final shipping is now underway as I get them out to everyone.

Image


Round 2 is Open for Orders for One Final Week

Hypersphere has a second batch in production and has given me the green light to go ahead and reopen this GB. We should be able to get the second batch rings in my hands before I pack and leave back to Europe. So if you want some rings, welcome aboard!

Pricing: everything is in US Dollars.

$0.65 per ring
$6.50 for shipping inside Europe.
$3.50 for shipping inside Britain.

Examples:

62 rings for an HHKB (59 required plus a few spares) = $40.30 + 6.50 shipping = $46.80 total.
70 rings for a FC660C (66 required plus a few spares) = $45.50 + 6.50 shipping = $52 total.
90 rings for a TKL Realforce or NovaTouch (87/88 plus a few spares) = $58.50 + 6.50 shipping = $65 total.
110 rings for a fullsize Realforce or Type Heaven (104/105 plus a few spares) = $71.50 + 6.50 shipping = $78 total.

Interested? PM me with your order!

Shared European shipping with my other live GBs: EliteKeyboards and Unicomp.

I fly home again in February. So this GB is coming to an end real soon now. Final boarding call!



First Batch Complete!

Image

And a second batch is in the works. Contact me if you want in. All shipping is still scheduled for February.



Okay, my winter trip is coming up, so it's high time to get this little GB started. You guys want some of these fine Topre damping rings manufactured by our good friend Hypersphere?

Image
NovaTouch sliders not included. You'll need your own keyboard!

Roll your own Type-S. They work on Realforces, HHKBs, Leopold FC660Cs, Type Heavens and most rewarding of all: they finally make a NovaTouch the smooth talking Topre keyboard it should have been in the first place.
Hyper's set aside a good stock of them for us and offered me a flat price per ring. I plan to gather orders for these guys from you lot — you can order any exact number of rings, there are no kits! — and I'll collect money from you guys via PayPal first. Then I buy the rings from him, and have them shipped to me while I'm in California. I bring them home in my luggage next February, count them out and package them up for each of you, and ship the buggers out. Silenced feeling of oneness with cup rubber for us all! (With a little assembly.)

Now, the tricky part is pricing. I need to bear PayPal's cut in mind, and I expect I'll need to buy a pile of bubblemailers and stamps when it's time to ship these guys out to you. So here's what I've worked out for the price per silencing ring:

$ 0.65 USD <<== This is the canonical price.
£ 0.42 GBP
€ 0.59 EUR

Plus $6.50 USD per order for European shipping. ($3.50 if you're here in Britain.) The post office charged £3.25 for the last European bubblemailer I sent, and they like to increase their prices each new year so I'm trying to cover my backside a bit from the likely sting!

Examples:

62 rings for an HHKB (59 required plus a few spares) = $40.30 + 6.50 shipping = $46.80 total.
70 rings for a FC660C (66 required plus a few spares) = $45.50 + 6.50 shipping = $52 total.
90 rings for a TKL Realforce or NovaTouch (87/88 plus a few spares) = $58.50 + 6.50 shipping = $65 total.
110 rings for a fullsize Realforce or Type Heaven (104/105 plus a few spares) = $71.50 + 6.50 shipping = $78 total.

You can order however many rings you want. (No spares? You daredevil!) And I will charge shipping only once for the lot of them, of course.

I need to collect payments in USD, or PayPal will steal a lot in conversion fees! Remember, I'm outside both the Euro zone (and SEPA!) and the US Dollar. I really need to avoid conversions, or it's horribly expensive. I'd rather keep things simple by getting a single payment from each one of you, all in USD.

And that's the final price to get to your door! Which is the whole point of a Europe proxy. If you are outside the EU, I may still be able to ship these to you on the cheap. But I can't promise the same shipping price.

The interest check was a clear success. You guys have already spoken up for most of Hypersphere's remaining stock! So let's do this thing.


All Aboard!

Hypersphere and I need payment in US Dollars, so PayPal is the way to go. Trouble is that PayPal expects goods to be shipped immediately, and I won't be back home with these rings until February! So I'm going to ask for PayPal gift payments instead.

PM me your order

Please include:
  • How many rings you want.
  • Your full shipping address.
I will calculate your total — see the examples above, that's the pricing I'm using — and I'll reply to you with PayPal payment instructions. This will be a PayPal gift in USD.

If you'd prefer to pay via PayPal's "pay for services" method, tell me about it. You must add 5% to your total. Because they take that away from me! I can't accept "goods" payments, because I won't have the goods until a few months from now. PayPal is too stupid to handle GBs correctly like that.


Let's see how well PayPal behaves. I don't like them much myself, but I'm outside both the USD and Euro zone so I don't have any better ideas.

Make your Topres spooky quiet… um… next spring!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 00:02
by scottc
Hmm, I'm tempted to get a HHKB-sized kit but they're awfully expensive. Actually, I'm considering a Novatouch-size batch just in case but that's even more expensive! No criticism of Hyper intended, I understand that the price is representative of the cost to him and that he's not taking us for a ride (even a short one). I'll need some time to mull it over so mark me as tentative!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 00:22
by Muirium
Understood.

They are expensive rings. The material and the laser cutting in particular are quite costly. I could potentially squeeze the price down a bit — I included a fair bit of breathing space in my calculations as I certainly don't want to have to jack things up if I've made an error! — and you could spare a few bucks on shipping with your London address anyway. I'd better go add that to the OP, in fact. Along with estimates for 60%, TKL and fullsize boards. Mind, I'm not doing this the same way as Hyper. You can order any arbitrary number of rings.

Bearing in mind the price of Topre boards, I'd say these are worth the money. I'm getting some more for myself. For perspective: they cost about the same as 7bit's MX switches. And installing them is a hell of a lot easier.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 00:45
by infodroid
I picked up a set of 90 rings from Hypersphere. With shipping to the UK and import duties, each ring came out to about £0.52. So I would say this GB is a pretty sweet deal. Needless to say they are high quality rings, as RexS attested under microscope.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 00:56
by infodroid
Count me in for 90 rings. That should cover TKL with some spares just in case.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 01:06
by Muirium
Noted. And thanks for the direct import price comparison.

If my luggage wasn't already claimed by a great box of NeXT keyboards that just showed up today, I'd be offering barebones NovaTouch imports as well. I consider my damped NovaTouch with Granite to be one of my best keyboards now. Can't squeeze any more boards in my bags though, alas. Without adding $200 worth of luggage to my flights!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 03:48
by andrewjoy
i can go for a tlk set

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 05:01
by ccc24
do adding these to the hhkb pro 2 shorten the key travel compared the the type-s?

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 11:22
by Muirium
I believe so. (The Type-S has cunning sliders with a bit of extra room for its rings.) But I have a few of these guys on my Realforce and honestly don't notice the difference in travel between the keys with them, and the majority without. Just the sound.

My HHKB is a Type-S anyway. Very similar feel and sound to me.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 11:26
by andrewjoy
So the reduction in travel is not as bad as say, o-rings ? Its more like soft landing pads ?

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 11:30
by Muirium
Aye. I'd bloody notice o-rings!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 11:32
by andrewjoy
I think i need to order some round 5a for when i finally get the novatouch , thinking white alphas, a set of grey mods a set of black mods and a Honeywell style red enter

Is there any green in Round 5a ?

Would not mind some green alt keys to match the green MX vim key i jammed on my beamspring :)

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 12:09
by Madhias
Great! I'd like to order 90 pieces of your finest dampening rings.

Image

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 12:20
by Madhias
Your video is really great and funny to watch (very sophisticated, actually I watch it with a subtle smile and it reminds me of that video of the washing machines guys posted here not long ago), I've gone through (Muiriums video) again and have to say I like the Realforce best followed by the Type-S. Now that I also have a HHKB, I am thinking of doing there a silent mod!

Without any silencing I also made some comparison of a Realforce TKL with 55 grams and NovaTouch with Round 5 caps:
The NovaTouch could really need some of the dampening rings!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 12:30
by webwit
62 for me.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 13:03
by TheNacho
Ill take a set of 70 for my 660.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 13:25
by Muirium
Noted and noted!
webwit wrote: 62 for me.
Funny, that sounds a bit like an HHKB you have in mind there…
webwit wrote: Love the sound of the HHKB. Would never pay more to muffle it.
Forum memory at your service!

I really like my HHKB Type-S, incidentally, and these rings have spread that feel to my NovaTouch. I only got about a TKL's worth of them from Hypersphere so far, and they mostly live on my NovaTouch which needs them so badly. Got a few on the 55g Realforce here, though, down along the bottom row and on the arrows. The mix of quiet editing and loud writing (undamped alphas) is an interesting experience! Not at all bad actually.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 13:51
by webwit
I have a new hhkb on the way, so I want to test it with the rings to see what the fuss is about. After that, I probably have 62 rings for sale.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 14:05
by Stabilized
I am in much of the same position, I am really interested to try some (especially on my Novatouch). As the whole object is to save on shipping of something small and light, could I also get you to proxy a set of EK landing pads if I placed an order for a set of these?

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 14:47
by Muirium
Sure. Small is good! I might take the opportunity to grab a red Topre Escape via the same order… if they ever have the damn thing in stock…

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 14:48
by Shinryuu
I'm in for "62 rings for an HHKB" <3

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 15:20
by ramnes
In for 70.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 15:22
by Stabilized
Muirium wrote: Sure. Small is good! I might take the opportunity to grab a red Topre Escape via the same order… if they ever have the damn thing in stock…
Sorry, but would it be too cheeky to ask for just the landing pads and maybe a red escape if you can order some? I would really like to get a set of these rings, but the price is a bit off putting for me at the moment.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 16:59
by Muirium
Well, if the Escape is on the house, I don't see why not!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 17:09
by flabbergast
I'm in for 90.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 18:02
by ccc24
I'm in for 62

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 18:19
by Spikebolt
I'm in for 90. You have a couple springs and keys from the Unicomp GB thing, but I don't remember if I paid that shipping already. Would you mind combining shipping for both those items please? :P

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 18:39
by Muirium
Naturally. Everyone in my Unicomp and NeXT GBs can combine shipping. I'll have to look at my notes to see who's paid what exactly!

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 21:47
by elRetto
thanks for doing this mu. I'm in for 90. please ship it with my unicomp order.

Posted: 01 Nov 2015, 22:10
by scottc
Hmmm, I'm in both of those GBs! Maybe I should combine shipping for great glory...