Hi-Profile PBT Dye-sub (the time has come)

matt3o · 24 Jan 2018, 20:47

I have a rant coming. hold tight

Laser · 24 Jan 2018, 23:34

Hope the rant doesn't cover all keys (fingers crossed).

kokokoy · 25 Jan 2018, 01:53

Laser wrote: ↑Hope the rant doesn't cover all keys (fingers crossed).

If one of them is MD’s change in color then we’re out of luck. Looking at all the posted set, seems that alphas became lighter and mods turned out grey.

Laser · 25 Jan 2018, 23:54

Some more pics from a new US reddit sale: https://imgur.com/a/YoSoV

Techno Trousers · 26 Jan 2018, 05:55

Laser wrote:Some more pics from a new US reddit sale: https://imgur.com/a/YoSoV

Yikes, that mixed incandescent and daylight lighting. Makes them look like old school ABS caps in dire need of retr0brite.

Mine (with triumph mods) are scheduled to be delivered on Saturday. I'll take some raw digital photos and process them against a white balance card to try to get an accurate color representation, and post results here.

matt3o · 27 Jan 2018, 08:15

Laser wrote: ↑Some more pics from a new US reddit sale: https://imgur.com/a/YoSoV

LOL! incredible what a camera can't do

caligo · 27 Jan 2018, 09:27

matt3o wrote: ↑I have a rant coming. hold tight

The suspense is killing us!

Seriously though, if there are problems with the drop it would be nice to have some hard facts.

MD themselves have not really been that forthcoming with info, but there seem to be two problems judging by the comments there: alignment of legends; and inconsistent font weights. The former I can probably live with as long as it is not that outrageous, but the latter would really be a bummer. There are not that many photos of e.g. the Dvorak and International kits out there, but I'm yet to see one that does not suffer from the 'someone pressed Ctrl+B by mistake' syndrome. Is this something that affects all keycaps in certain kits, or has production just been inconsistent?

If the majority of the International kits look OK, there is at least some hope. If not, then apparently all I'm getting in the mail is a cardbord box filled with disappointment. I have a Leopold board here that is waiting for some decent caps before it comes with me to the office. If this set turns out to be a dud I will need to get something else for it. Would be nice to know what to prepare for.

Slom · 27 Jan 2018, 10:48

Got my caps in.

Unfortunately I also have bold legends in the int. kit. But only for the Letters, the symbols/numbers are fine as far as I can tell. (small correction: the large strike-through zero is affected as well, all the mono legends in the international kit apparently)

I had to switch the Y back in place of the Z, just looked to weird

. For the Umlauts, it doesn't bother me that much as they are in their own cluster, with only symbols on the one side.

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gogusrl · 27 Jan 2018, 14:57

that looks awful

my package is en route to me. Hope to get sometime next week.

Techno Trousers · 27 Jan 2018, 16:17

I actually prefer the bold version, but I guess they were all supposed to come out lighter? Only Matt3o knows for sure. I got an ANSI set, so I'm hoping that fonts will be consistent. Looking forward to hearing an explanation and remediation plans.

caligo · 27 Jan 2018, 16:21

Not that the bold weight in itself looks bad, although I much prefer a lighter weight. But the whole QWERTZ thing looks really off, as will UIOPÅ and JKLÖÄ which is what a Swedish layout will result in if all International kits indeed suffer from the font inconsistency. Guess I will find out soon enough.

gogusrl · 27 Jan 2018, 16:23

I only want them to be consistent...

No pics of the blue mods ? I got blue mods

caligo · 27 Jan 2018, 16:37

gogusrl wrote: ↑I only want them to be consistent...

No pics of the blue mods ? I got blue mods

There are a bunch of photos in the comments over on MD. The Triumph color looks great, much better than in those potato pictures from the factory that were posted a while back. Which is good I guess, because the way the kits where set up everyone will at least get a good standard ANSI kit with decent consistency – if nothing else, us Nordic and QWERTZ people can settle for using an ANSI board or selling the set.

Or MD could make it right and send out replacement keycaps. It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility, although it would probably take quite a while.

Laser · 27 Jan 2018, 17:08

"Luckily", sometimes lack of money can be a good thing, I only ordered a "normal" TKL kit - which, reading the above posts, appears to be alright.

@Slom, how do the keycaps feel? ( texture, profile, thickness )

Techno Trousers · 27 Jan 2018, 20:24

gogusrl wrote: ↑I only want them to be consistent...

No pics of the blue mods ? I got blue mods

Matteo put pics of a set with Triumph mods on his blog site. But again, not color corrected.

Slom · 27 Jan 2018, 20:24

Laser wrote: ↑"Luckily", sometimes lack of money can be a good thing, I only ordered a "normal" TKL kit - which, reading the above posts, appears to be alright.

@Slom, how do the keycaps feel? ( texture, profile, thickness )

Texture and thickness are great. For profile, that is something that will need some use before I can really judge it. This is my first sculpted high profile key set to actually type on, don't have anything to compare the feel to really.

If you want to have comparison shots to some other profiles, I might be able to do that. But right now the light is gone.

Slom · 27 Jan 2018, 20:29

caligo wrote: ↑ Which is good I guess, because the way the kits where set up everyone will at least get a good standard ANSI kit with decent consistency – if nothing else, us Nordic and QWERTZ people can settle for using an ANSI board or selling the set.

ISO UK should be doable as well ...

ANSI *shudder*

Laser · 27 Jan 2018, 20:51

Slom wrote: ↑ Texture and thickness are great. For profile, that is something that will need some use before I can really judge it. This is my first sculpted high profile key set to actually type on, don't have anything to compare the feel to really.

If you want to have comparison shots to some other profiles, I might be able to do that. But right now the light is gone.

Thanks! No need for comparison shots I think (unless you're set to do them anyway), I was interested rather in how you felt the keys when typing, i.e. your subjective opinion - while waiting for my set to arrive

caligo · 27 Jan 2018, 21:03

Slom wrote: ↑ ISO UK should be doable as well ...

ANSI *shudder*

Yeah, not that big a fan of ANSI myself. I tried it for a while, and still have an ANSI Novatouch sitting around. The lack of ÅÄÖ was something I could kind of get used to, but all the alternate characters being in the 'wrong' place was just too much of a pain. If the international kit looks too off and MD do not come up with a good solution, I will probably just end up selling the base kit to someone who does not mind rocking ANSI.

Laser · 27 Jan 2018, 21:07

@caligo, I can trade you an ISO Novatouch for the ANSI one, if you want

caligo · 27 Jan 2018, 22:03

Laser wrote: ↑@caligo, I can trade you an ISO Novatouch for the ANSI one, if you want

That's an interesting proposition, actually. I'll send you a PM.

Laser · 28 Jan 2018, 00:11

caligo wrote: ↑
Laser wrote: ↑@caligo, I can trade you an ISO Novatouch for the ANSI one, if you want
That's an interesting proposition, actually. I'll send you a PM.

Answered.

Petch · 29 Jan 2018, 01:41

What a disappointment this was. Luckily my order hadn't yet shipped so I cancelled it. I saw someone else's in person and didn't want to have to deal with photographing keys from 12 different kits for massdrop support.

What plans are there for a R2, and what will be done to ensure this doesn't happen again? Even Beige and Triumph colours were nothing like the renders. Did you receive samples of the plastic colour before full production, matt3o?

FSund · 29 Jan 2018, 08:13

matt3o wrote: ↑I have a rant coming. hold tight

How's the rant coming?

Oblotzky · 29 Jan 2018, 09:20

FSund wrote: ↑
matt3o wrote: ↑I have a rant coming. hold tight
How's the rant coming?

Maybe he announced it in the heat of the moment. After all, he has a NDA to respect.

caligo · 29 Jan 2018, 10:26

Oblotzky wrote:
FSund wrote: ↑
matt3o wrote: ↑I have a rant coming. hold tight
How's the rant coming?
Maybe he announced it in the heat of the moment. After all, he has a NDA to respect.

If that were the case, then why not just say so? The more likely scenario is that Matt3o is simply waiting for more information, e.g. how widespread the issues are.

Judging by how MD has managed these things previously, keyset designers are not necessarily privy to more info than us buyers. For example, I think it's safe to assume that Matt3o hasn't even seen the international kit in person yet – had he gotten production samples with that bold font, I highly doubt production would have moved forward before the issues were fixed.

zslane · 29 Jan 2018, 19:16

Do we have any evidence that the bold legend issue has spread further than the international kits?

Khers · 29 Jan 2018, 19:37

zslane wrote: ↑Do we have any evidence that the bold legend issue has spread further than the international kits?

Yup:

Oblotzky wrote: ↑It appears there was a change in font, which the Colevrak kit did not switch to?

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyb ... great_but/

caligo · 29 Jan 2018, 20:31

If the only keys with bold legends are the International and Dvorak kits, then that would be roughly 200 out of about 1800 orders if the statistics posted on the drop page are accurate (that is, disregarding any overlap between Dvorak and International). Even if they've sold more since the last update to those numbers, the proportions ought to be more or less the same. That would mean about ten percent of the orders are messed up, not acounting for misalligned prints and missing keycaps.

The big question is how MD will handle this. Misalligned caps can be replaced to some extent, at least until their reserves run out. But if all the International and Dvorak kits are faulty, then there are no replacements to be had. If the fault lies with the manifacturer, then there might be replacements down the line. But say MD messed up somehow, e.g. sent the wrong files to the manifacturer – then what? I doubt MD will pay for a re-run of just 200 sets, prices would be much higher for such small volumes. I guess that would mean refunds for the faulty kits, and maybe another $15 voucher.

I guess the other big question is how something like this even happens. I get that some dude slaving away in a factory can have a bad day and mess up, but don't they do QC at the manifacturers end? And how can MD not inspect at least one of each set before sending out peoples' orders, to make sure there are no systemic issues? If the problem indeed affects all keys in certain sets, then it's simply inexcusable.

zslane · 29 Jan 2018, 22:00

As I understand it, /dev/tty went through many iterations of prototypes, with changes in font occurring at different stages. MassDrop is investigating what happened, but the current theory seems to be that keycaps from previous prototype stages got accidentally mixed in with final keycaps by the manufacturer.

It is possible that the "inspectors" in the New Jersey warehouse are not sufficiently educated on what to look for in terms of problems; what seems like an obvious font mismatch to us may not even register on a (largely) uninformed inspector's radar. All of MD's knowledgeable keycap aficionados are in SF, not NJ. This is not an excuse, mind you, merely a possible explanation for how such things get past "quality control".

And yes, the remedies are obvious.