Finally, we’re back with episode 2 of the Kpop mech series. Last episode
I made this Blackpink themed board, and I loved all the comments you guys left, it was really
encouraging to see all the kind words for this sort of series. Because I know that
this isn’t for everyone, but hopefully you can still enjoy all the modding and stuff.
First up! The winner for Blackpink’s How you like that physical copy is…Brozoe.
And we’ll do another giveaway for this girl group later, and today that group is
ITZY! Gotta love em. They’re relatively new, debuting in early 2019. If you know Twice,
these girls are the next girl group in the JYP line, and already super successful,
winning a bunch of awards, with all their title tracks being absolute bangers.
First I must preface that I am Reveluv, but love Itzy as well.
With the Blackpink board, it was a pretty expensive custom. So today I
wanted to go to the other end with this Ajazz K620T, which started at only $49
on Kickstarter, but is currently on preorder for 75 bucks, so still pretty budgetty.
First impressions, this looks sweet as, very clean attractive design, 60% form factor. It has a
tablet / phone groove, as it does have Bluetooth. And something I always love, a volume wheel.
Before we take it apart, let’s have a quick listen to it in its stock form.
Sooo, it’s not the easiest board to take apart. This video isn’t really a tutorial
on how to mod the board, but if you wanted to, I think you can figure it out from this.
Plastic tabs are always a little scary to undo, especially if you’ve never done it before.
Usually I use like guitar picks, but this is what was on my table at the time.
Okay, let’s start with bias. Obviously love them all, but I’m not gonna be a fence sitter.
Girlfriend’s bias is Ryujin, while mine is Lia, easy, all day. Thinking about it, I think I do
have a bit of a thing for main vocalists. Anyway, she’s not like a super power singer, but for sure
she has a stunning, distinctive voice, and you can tell straight away that it’s her. Also,
her dancing has come a long way since the beginning, which everyone is proud of. Love her.
Alright, I really love the clean design of this board, so I don’t want to veer too far away from
that, so I’ll keep it relatively simple with the paint job. As always, good preparation
makes painting easier. I gave it a bit of a sand to rough it up a little bit, nothing
too intense. With these sorts of cases that clip together, it’s good to mask off the contact areas,
otherwise with the added thickness of the paint, it can get pretty difficult to put back together.
It was really tough to choose colours for this project, because they don’t
have a distinct theme, and really, it goes for like every other group except for Blackpink. I
was gonna go for the pink, purply kind of colour scheme from Dalla Dalla, but
I think the It’z Me / Wannabe colours are more recognisable.
So these Tamiya spray paint cans are great for stuff like this. They’re made for painting
hobbyist models, like model vehicles, Gundam, that sort of stuff. So they have
a finer spray with their nozzle, that’s easier to control and therefore comes out really even.
Using normal spray cans from the hardware store is fine, and I’ve done a lot of that,
but they are harder to control and to get an even finish. They’re not too expensive,
but you’d probably need 2 cans to cover a keyboard to be safe.
Aight, favourite music video. I really like their recent ‘Not Shy’ MV because
it’s quite a bit different to the rest, with that western theme and everything. But
for me like this board, Wannabe is great. I just love the colours,
love the sets, love the look. The opening sequence with Lia winding up the doll too.
But definitely the theme, much like the song, about being yourself is positive and encouraging.
Now to the bottom. Logo is a given, so I’ll put that on.
A bunch will cringe at this, but stuff it, I’m gonna put their faces on it, because why not?
These photos are also from the Wannabe era taken by Dispatch. I didn’t do too many
design variations, but to keep with the blocky design of the board, I kept it quite simple.
But how are we going to put this onto the board? We’re gonna use waterslide
decals. You may have come across this stuff if you’re into model making, but
yeh, they’re a transfer paper that you can use with your normal printer to print whatever on.
Usually, you can get them in clear or white. It just depends on what you want to do.
But more importantly, they’re very thin,
unlike stickers which can be very obviously higher than the rest of the surface.
Since printers don’t print white, if you use the clear paper, the image will be quite translucent,
so if you have a dark surface, you gotta use the white paper.
So since I have a dark blue base, I have to use the white paper to show any colour.
You also want to use whatever the highest quality mode on your printer is, so it’ll take a while.
And if they’re not waterproof, you have to spray over them with some clear coat. These just happen
to be the ones I had at home, which are both acrylic based. I like to go light at first,
because you don’t want to drench it, and then go a little heavier.
Now to favourite choreography. Itzy are known to be great dancers,
and they’ve always had great choreo. But easily Not Shy is top tier. Love that opening.
I mean, I’m not a dance expert or anything, so I can’t really describe these things,
but they did talk about how difficult it was, and it does look that way.
The keycaps. They’re pretty decent actually. Although the coloured accent enter
and escape keys are pretty bad, they’re dye subbed, just
horribly, the stock ones are way better. Typeface pretty clean, but what gets me is
that they’re Cherry profile, which is awesome. So slightly shorter than your typical OEM caps.
I’m gonna paint over those terrible caps with this metallic green from Vallejo’s Mecha range,
looks pretty sweet.
For the escape key, I struggled to think of something to put here, because they don’t
really have a symbol or something like that. My girlfriend told me to try their hand
crown pose that they do at the end of their music videos, but
it looked pretty scuffed. So I just went with their name in Korean.
And for the enter key, I went with Midzy, which is the official fandom name.
While I’m painting, favourite B-side. Itzy don’t have the biggest discography of course,
they haven’t been around too long. But Surf from their latest release is an
absolute banger. Bit lighter than their other stuff, just chill vibes honestly,
feel good stuff. Solid line distribution as well, and it suits their voices nicely. Love it.
After letting all that stuff dry for ages, let’s put this stuff back together.
The plate turned out nice. I only painted the top, and left the bottom bare.
I lubed the stabilisers, and all the switches with Krytox 205g0, because might as well. On
the website they have their own switches, I don’t think these are the same, as this is an
early unit. And the PCB on this is pretty low quality, again, just a pre-production sample.
And finally, favourite song. What I like about Itzy is their concepts are mainly
based around you as a person. Being true to yourself, self confidence,
and just very positive overall. So Dalla Dalla, Icy, Wannabe, and Not Shy are all very much like
that. But I gotta say, Not Shy takes the cake for me. Admittedly it was a grower,
I didn’t feel it instantly, but after a few listens, it’s so good.
The intro, Chae’s Itzy call. It suits Lia’s voice beautifully. Yeji coming strong in the
chorus’. Classic Ryujin with the rapping. But Yuna shines in this one for me. Pure sunshine.
And here it is. My Itzy themed mechanical keyboard! It’s… nice, not really what I
envisioned, but that’s the thing when creating stuff. Sometimes you hit the mark, sometimes you
miss. And I think here, I didn’t nail it. But the quality and execution of work was all fine.
So again, I went with the Wannabe colour scheme, so the primary colour is this dark blue,
which I really like with a satin finish. And then it’s a mixture of green
and orange. Orange is a complementary colour to blue, so they’re opposite on the colour wheel,
and match in that way. So very contrasting. While green is just next to blue. But
the orange just comes off as a little too gaudy for me. Maybe a little too saturated.
But that’s also because I kept with the very simplistic blocky aesthetic of the board.
So in that regard, there’s a lack of cohesion. And for the most part with these Kpop groups, their
aesthetic is usually somewhat aggressive, and I didn’t really show that, besides I guess the Midzy
enter key, and this “In All of Us” badge at the front which is their motto I guess you call it.
Turning it over, and again, I kept it very simple.
There’s about 9 billion layers of clear coat on there because I kept messing up,
and clear coat helps hide that sort of stuff. But yeh, we have all of the members, all in
order by the way. That bit turned out really nicely, but the Itzy logo was pretty scuffed,
and I think I coulda just airbrushed it on. I can definitely do a better job of integrating
the decals to make it look less sticker-like, because it kinda does here. But again,
I kept with the blocky aesthetic, and also stayed consistent with the colour scheme I had going on.
Let’s have another quick listen, shouldn’t be too different, as I just lubed the switches.
Yeh, sounds a little nicer lubed. Pretty standard pre-built mech feel. I didn’t hear
much ping. But check this out. I am an absolute clown, I put the stabs in backwards. To be fair,
they didn’t have like the notches to line em up with the plate. But yeh...
The actual Ajazz K620T is pretty interesting. It’s a 60%, so it just has the main area of the board,
with everything else on secondary layers. It has RGB backlighting. I absolutely love volume knob,
they’re just so convenient, but paired with its Bluetooth capabilities, it’s even better.
It’s unique feature is that it has this big groove for mobile devices. It can fit
my phone with a pretty slim case just fine. I suspect thicker cases will be a no go. And when
it comes to tablets, here I have a 7th gen iPad without a case, because it doesn’t fit with one.
And yeh, I’m pretty sure it’s made for this because
it’s the exact width as the iPad in landscape.
So as a board, it’s pretty unique in the budget market. Decently built. Actually,
the stock keycaps are pretty damn nice, especially in Cherry profile,
so that’s sweet. I’ll link the board in the description if you want to check it out.
And that’s episode 2 of the Kpop mech series. I think I was pretty harsh on the board, but don’t
get me wrong, I think it does look pretty good. It just doesn’t scream Itzy to me, so in that regard,
I failed. But it’s all learning, and all fun nonetheless, so it’s all good.
As with every Kpop Mech series episodes, we’ll giveaway two physical copies of their latest
EP ‘Not Shy’. It comes with the CD, photobook, card,, poster, and all that stuff. This time we’ll
do one on Instagram. And one on here. Just be subscribed, and comment down below your bias and
favourite song, details in the description. Best of luck to all, and I promise the next episode
won’t be as long of a wait. Let me know what you think, and what other groups you’d be keen on!