honey where are my keycaps
well howdy hey hypiotech here with a double feature yeah two things in one not only will i
be building the cutest keyboard ever seen this one of one hippie tech bongo wait who took my
keycaps why are they blank oh well i'll also be using blank keycaps for a week will i be able to
type will i suffer stick around and find out but because this is a double feature i'll document the
build process too which should be really fun even if you're not into keyboards trust me and i'll be
using these akka rose switches which dear god you guys have asked me to review these a million times
holy moly calm down you know what yeehaw here's an extra howdy hey for all of you that hit the
subscribe button now that's not very many of you so if you want an extra howdy hey you better hit
the subscribe button right now it's free unlike this keyboard add time alfred hey hipfio dude
you're moving no what's going on i'm not moving i just sold all my stuff to buy more keycaps
group buys are gonna be the death of you they look really good right help we're gonna run an ad we're
gonna get a sponsor let's get you some money alfred let's go now you've probably heard a lot
about squarespace as it's the number one platform for building a website online now hear me out hear
me out i used it i actually did use it and i made a website to help save alfred as he spent way too
much money on group buys it was incredibly easy to build it honestly gave me a ton of tools to
do a lot of different things if i wanted to make an e-commerce website and sell some keyboards or
sell all of alfred's personal collections that way he could make a little bit of money i could
and it'd be very easy to set up with squarespace's e-commerce section go to squarespace.com in the
description for a free trial and if you're ready to build a website of your own and make it go
public then go to squarespace.comtech and use code hypeotech to save 10 off your subscription all
right let's go save alfred so to start my journey towards using blank keycaps i had to start with
a blank keyboard or that's at least what i told myself in this case i had oh some keyboards custom
make me a hippie oh bongo that's a bongo board but with hippie headphones they're purple and
they're headphones and they're so cute and i love this so much now this is an acrylic stacked case
so it's a bunch of stacked acrylic pieces held together with a little like uh beam thing so
it's actually cut out of a bunch of different pieces of acrylic this gives it a super cool
stacked effect and it almost looks like a gemstone from the sides which i really like now if this is
not the cutest keyboard ever i'm gonna need you to definitely comment and tell me what's cuter
as you're 100 wrong like literally wrong this is carved in my favorite layout ever which is the id
80's 75 we'll get into that layout a little bit more later but first let me take it apart uh with
my little magic screw and then remove layer by layer now i felt really scared here as i thought
i was gonna break off one of these pieces of acrylic but i managed to do it without any trouble
so this leaves us with the plate which actually just sits as one of the pieces of the case next we
have the pcb which is the id80v2 pcb if you don't know what that is basically it's a hot swap 75
keyboard and i like it quite a lot now oh what's this what's this what's this what's this oh it's
akko roses you freaking rascals i finally did it yeah look at look at me go you guys have seriously
asked me to review these switches a million times oh and e1 that lubed them for me gave me a cute
little stamp now honestly as i've said before these are literally just ktt roses i cannot tell
any meaningful difference between ktt roses but hey they're pretty good and i tried to put them
into just the plate but that had no working work as i set it down and it did this every time very
sad so like any good problems in life i solved it with gel gaskets wait what what problems do
you solve with gel gaskets why is this in the script this made it so the pcb and plate had a
nice distance between them constantly so there was no warpage while trying to put the switches
in it was actually super big brain so honestly i forgot stabilizers were things so i had to go
get some of those and if you want to pick up some stabilizers or the lube i used to lube them then
click that link down in the description down below woohoo finally it was time to assemble the board
and i really i'm kind of just stalling for this one i really didn't want to use those blank
keycaps but i'll still give you some magic yeehaw so because these switches were three pin meaning
that they didn't have the two extra little nubs on the bottom they are a little bit annoying to put
in but i managed i managed next i just had to slot this back in on the pegs and then reassemble the
board now i had definitely forgotten the order here so i messed it up and then had to redo it
before this magic so look it's when the headphones are going to swap ooh magic so congratulations
hippo built the keyboard on the hip yo tech keyboard building channel that's so surprising
now it's the moment you've all been waiting for hypnotech using blank keycaps for a week and his
eternal suffering or whatever also let's just take a second to appreciate how freaking clean this is
oh like i went for hypeotech blue on the case and then hippotech purple on the headphones
and these echo roses are not quite hypeotech pink but i'll let it slide speaking of sliding uh let
me throw in these keycaps now these are escaped keyboard ramune keycaps and i got them for free
from escape keyboard a while back now this isn't my first time using escape keyboard blanks as i
built my board with it the videos in the top right but i swapped those out after like a day with pbt
toby so i really did not use them at all these are palm key caps and they are incredibly high quality
although also incredibly expensive they give the board a very clacky sound that we'll discover
quite soon now i thought i was pretty up for this challenge of using the keycaps for a week and i
was ready to put them on my board interestingly enough my daily driver the id80 crystal has the
same exact layout as this pcb so i should be used to where all the keys are however it's going to be
weird not being able to look down when i need it also since i'm here shilling this keycaps out on
my crystal is infiniky delight a keycap set that i made and it'll be live on the key company during
summer of 2021 that's pretty soon or right now join my discord for updates speaking of updates
it's time to update this board with some oh that doesn't work okay it's time to there we go update
the board with some keycaps mr clean is that you oh no it's my board okay got it yeah this is
honestly one of the most gorgeous boards i've ever built and it wasn't even a thousand dollars wow
that's so nice but now you're asking hippie what was your process like using it for a week well
it was an absolute struggle kind of so for normal typing it's actually really easy to use blank
keycaps as someone that's used to normal typing however anytime i try and press a key like minus
or plus or f8 or something weird and obscure that's when the struggle's kicked in another
example is i'm editing this video right now with this keyboard wow that's keyboardception and
a lot of my hotkeys with davinci resolve are are just like super obscure and it's literally like
i can't find them where are they but towards the end of the week i actually got decently proficient
i found myself looking down at my keyboard less and i mean looking down literally doesn't help
you when you can't see anything and my fingers got more used to just pecking out the keys that
i needed however i did still find myself having to hit that backspace quite a bit if i got a little
bit lost although the more i used blanks the less i had to spam the backspace but here's my verdict
if you've never used blank keycaps before and you're not comfortable typing without looking
at your keyboard dear god do not get blank keycaps you will struggle so hard like this
that was what my first day was like a lot of that but overall i'm happy that i did this little
challenge and i'll probably keep using this board from time to time as i really love this layout
although i don't think i'll be using it for anything like video editing and i'd just be
using it for normal typing would you guys use blank keycaps let me know in the comments down
below also i'll be leaving you guys with the final sound test and typing test check out my
words per minute to see how i actually did i ask that you watch the full typing test to support my
youtube algorithm overlords and do a typing test of your own in the comments also hit the like
button and subscribe for more new content like this also i have a join button down below this
is your number one way of supporting the channel it gets you really cool perks like access to a
special channel on my discord and cool emotes finally a special thank you to exco matt sunax
creation fenney joseph crang no ray platypot and aquarius for hitting that join button yeehaw bye