Today we have another sweet custom mechanical keyboard build for a client, and this is the
Satisfaction 75 from CannonKeys.
This was sent to me from the person I’m building it for, so the package was already
opened.
And inside we get a nice CannonKeys branded sleeve.
We have our keyswitches which does not come with the kit.
The PCB.
An OLED panel.
Some hardware.
Bunch of o-rings.
And two knobs.
Here’s the sleeve.
Pretty nice, just a simple neoprene one with a mesh pocket at the front, which also had
the rotary encoder in it.
And yeh, the Satisfaction 75 is their first premium group buy, in which 250 were made
according to this card, which is quite big for a first buy actually.
And is a big step up from their practice kits, which I’ll make a video on later.
First impressions, everything looks in perfect condition.
We can see some unique looking holes on the right side which is exciting.
But as always, before you do anything, chuck on the rubber feet so that we don’t scuff
up the bottom.
But let’s take it apart to have a closer look.
There’s a bunch of Phillips head screws on the bottom.
The bottom screws are fine for normal screwdrivers, but for the remaining ones, you will need
a thin one to fit inside the holes.
Then there’s 3 large countersunk Phillips head screws which hold in the brass weight.
And finally, the plate is screwed to the top piece, meaning that it is a top mount design,
which in theory should provide a more even typing experience, and also potentially provide
a slightly less harsh bottom out, in comparison to a typical tray mount design which has standoffs
on the base.
So here’s the 1.5mm brass plate.
The sandblasted finish looks perfect.
There’s no blemishes or anything, feels great as well.
We have an interesting flex cut design for the space bar.
As we can see, it has a little bit of give towards the front, and that just softens that
bottom out a touch in theory.
Here’s the top aluminium piece.
Looks sweet, with a typical top mount design.
So we have our screw holes for the plate, and holes to attach the bottom to the top.
We also have 4 positioning pins just to help with aligning a little bit.
The bottom aluminium piece is pretty simple.
There’s some recessed holes around the edge, which just gives clearance for the screws
which we’ll see when we get to the mounting.
And also another rectangle recess in the bottom right which gives clearance for a button battery.
And finally the brass weight.
It’s quite small, but it’s chunky and packs a punch at about 6.5mm thick and just
under 420 grams.
And for reference, a typical retail full size mech is usually just over 1kg.
I think this is a first for me.
The PCB was in an actual enclosed packet.
Anyway here it is in blue, and we have the Rev 1.3 PCB.
Again, some funky stuff happening in the top right corner.
It’s using USB type C. And it supports MX style keyswitches, and through hole LEDs if
you want backlighting.
They have a simple and easy to follow build guide on their website.
And the first thing to solder is the OLED panel.
I’ve only used these once before on the Sol 2, and they’re pretty cool, makes it
fancy and stuff.
What’s nice is that they included nylon spacers which sets the panel at the correct
height, as the pins are quite long.
So uh, at first, I did this the wrong way, with the pins on the outside edge.
So I had to desolder it, and have another go.
The best way to do it is to solder one far pin, and adjust it until you get it right,
by reflowing the joint.
And then do the same to the pin on the other end.
Now to the soldering.
Usually I recommend to test the key positions, as the PCB offers various bottom row layouts.
But if you remember looking at the plate, the left side and the spacebar are completely
fixed, so that was a waste of time.
Still a good habit to have though.
Stabilisers are always boring.
But I did the bandaid mod to soften bottom out, and lubed these Durock stabs with dielectric
grease.
And yeh, always lube your stabs.
In the instructions it mentions that the stabs do have a tight fit with the plate, which
was tested with GMK screw ins.
With Durock stabs, it’s super tight.
It fits, but it is a little uncomfortable putting that much pressure on the PCB.
But I got it together.
And now watch me struggle to put in all these keyswitches.
Some combinations of switches and plates are harder than others in trying to get the switches
properly into the plate.
The problem that can occur is that when you push in a keyswitch, the plate goes down with
it towards the PCB, so you don’t have that equal spacing between the plate and PCB.
Usually I solder 1 pin for each keyswitch in the corners, and press them in while reflowing
to make sure that they’re in properly.
But that doesn’t help with the middle keyswitches, since there’s no support there
So I’m interested to hear what you other keyboard builders do.
Because now that I think about it, I do have this issue, especially since I’m very particular
about putting keyswitches in 100%.
So particular that I reflow and press nearly every keyswitch just to make sure they’re
all aligned perfectly.
Does it make sense to do a couple in the middle first while you still have that flexibility
with the plate that you can leverage.
And then work outwards?
Anyway, let me know what you think.
I’m probably just an absolute novice, even thought I’m built so many boards.
Oh and these are 62 or 65g Zilents, I can’t tell.
And I lubed these with Christo MCG 111 from KeyboardTreehouse.com.
It’s a thin lube that’s easy to apply.
These are silent tactiles, so I didn’t want to dampen them too much, and I think retaining
the tactile bump makes sense.
And lastly, here’s the rotary encoder.
Simple to solder, as it only goes in one way.
And in the end, you should have something that looks a little like this.
You can also clean up all the flux residue if you want to, but that won’t impact on
performance.
Interestingly, we replace all the silver Philips head screws with these black cap or hex screws.
But we need that extra length so that we can use the o-rings.
They refer to this as burger mount, and it’s essentially the same concept as gasket mount,
where the plate is sandwiched between 2 o-rings.
So there’s no metal to metal contact.
The
blacks screws also replace the silver ones for screwing the two aluminium pieces together.
Unfortunately for the two rear ones, they weren’t gripping the bottom.
They were going in, but didn’t actually screw in, so I had to use the silver screws
for those 2 spots which worked just fine.
And you can’t see them anyway, since it’s so deep.
One thing you may not know about me, is that I have like no aftermarket keysets.
I have one SA set, but that’s pretty much it.
So when I do build vids and the client doesn’t have caps yet because you know, group buys.
I have to borrow sets.
So a big thanks to my mate Jono for letting me borrow a bunch for some vids.
And the final touch.
We have two knobs.
Really difficult choice to be honest.
The black and white does make perfect sense, since it matches.
But the gold is just something else, and goes with the brass.
Cannon Keys also did a collaboration with RAMA WORKS with a special edition knob.
Don’t think that’s been done before, but it looks sweet in the pictures.
And here it is.
The Satisfaction 75, and it is a very satisfying keyboard.
I’m a sucker for 75% boards.
I’ve really enjoyed my Singa V3, which has a compressed 75% design that some people can
perceive it to feel a little cramped.
This on the other has a spaced out approach, where we have the more traditional group of
clusters.
And it just changes the whole aesthetic.
It feels more spacious, and even relaxed to be honest.
We get to see a bit more of the top casing, going through the board, which gives it a
bit more character.
It does make it ever so slightly larger, but still very compact for its essentially tenkeyless
primary functionality.
The case design has a mixture of lines.
So from the top, it has quite a blocky look with a chamfer that goes all the way round.
The sides are just flat.
But then they integrate this arc that joins the two straight lines together, while keeping
that butt which houses the brass weight.
All of the bottom however, doesn’t have a chamfer, so it’s pretty sharp and unrefined
in my opinion.
And it’s an interesting design.
The board was inspired by Pirate Captain Henry Morgan’s Flagship vessel the ‘Satisfaction’
according to the groupbuy page.
I like it.
It’s unique, and quite different to most other weight designs that are usually more
bold and simple.
We have the deep ocean blue version, so navy blue.
Of course lighting effects how it looks, but it’s a nice quite bright navy blue.
The anodised finish is quality.
No blemishes, smooth to the touch, and it looks very even.
The colour matching between the two halves is also very good.
Anyway, awesome finish, awesome colour.
I believe it was originally made to match GMK Calm Depths.
I also thought I’d use that set, but they already know what that looks like, so I went
with GMK Mizu, which is inspired by the Water Tribe in the amazing Avatar series.
There were a couple of ways I could have done this, but this is what I ended up with.
The novelties are pretty sweet, but I’m just not much of a fan of how they actually
end up looking on a keyboard.
Really cool keyset, and I am a huge fan of the Avatar series.
And underneath the caps, coincidentally, we do have blue coloured stems.
As said before, these are Zilent’s, so a silent tactile switch, which has dampeners
on the stem.
And were lubed with Christo MCG 111.
As expected, it is a quiet keyboard.
The top out sound on the spacebar is pretty loud though, so I gotta find a way to fix
that.
Silent tactiles, and silents in general, tend to sound and feel a little scratchy.
Even with the lube, it’s not like super smooth or anything, and you can hear it.
But it’s nice rounded tactile bump that is quite strong, with the bump right near
the top.
The top mount design provides an nice even typing experience.
It’s kind of difficult to notice the subtlities of designs of plates and mounts and such with
strong tactile bumps.
And like the flex cut for the spacebar, perhaps there’s difference, but I can’t really
make that side by side comparison.
The stabilised keys are all good, no rattle with any.
And overall, it’s a great typing experience as expected.
Now finally on our way back to the top right corner, we have our OLED panel and rotary
encoder.
Now these are legit awesome.
Looking at screen, first all, aesthetic.
By default it’s showing all the keyboard information.
So we have the current layer.
The encoder mode.
The caps and scroll lock indicators.
Modifier highlights, so when we hold shift, S lights up.
And the matrix visualisation is pretty sweet, as it shows what you’re doing in realtime.
Then if we hold FN and press the encoder, it changes to time mode.
And the third and final mode is just off.
Now the encoder works together with the OLED panel.
So if we hold FN and turn the encoder, we can change the mode, and that will show on
the panel.
So we can do all this stuff, plus you can have 3 custom modes.
I personally just leave it on volume, and I always find volume wheels to be awesome.
But yeh, you can do whatever.
And you can further customise all of that in VIA, which is an awesome tool that applies
changes instantly.
And that’s it.
I really enjoyed building and actually using
this keyboard for a bit.
I love the spaced out layout with the clusters.
I think it looks and feels great.
The OLED panel and knob combination is sweet as, and adds that cool factor to it.
However, I have seen some people having issues with them not working properly.
And there is that potential.
Other than that, there were the screws not going in properly on the rear.
But everything else was great, quality, build, awesome.
And it’s just a great kit from Cannon Keys.
It’s still early days for them, and I know that there will definitely be improvements
on their future boards.
And if you’re keen on this, let him know in the comments, and force a round 2.