MT3 seems to be the reigning king of textured, grippy keycaps but I’m wondering if anyone has firsthand comparison experience with Signature Plastics’ SA-P sets.
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Is there some information you are looking for specifically? I have both, and prefer MT3 but that is because of the profile not the texture. The texture between the two sets are pretty much the same IMO.
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This is basically what I wanted to know, though I’m curious what you prefer about the MT3 profile.
It’s mostly the profile itself. The best that I could do to explain it is that MT3 sort of “hugs” your fingers. Think of it like in the game of tennis when you hit the ball right in the middle of the racket. There is that distinct feeling that is associated with that that it makes it difference from SA.
I also have both. The texture is very similar. The printing is better on the SP keys, but MT3 printing isn’t terrible or anything.
I hate typing on MT3. Thet have very small but deep cups with sharp edges & steep angling on some of the rows. These all conspire against a person who likes to whack the heck out of the keyboard from a great height while typing - it feels like my fingertips are being stabbed. If you’re a civilised touch typist who’s used to modern laptop-style keyboards then I suspect you’d love MT3.
An advantage of the SA keycaps was that I could build my own colour-scheme. The range of colours wasn’t huge, but it had the colours I wanted.
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I love the aesthetics of MT3; my first set of caps ever was Susuwatari, which I got because the narrow squared font on dark keys was the closest thing I could find to C64 caps back in 2019, and they really gave me a lot of nostalgia.
But two things have driven me to be almost exclusively an SA user. The MT3 ABS kitting (or lack thereof - I’m an ABS fan, but no 2u shift in MT3 makes it a no-go on many of my boards), and the sharp edges. I can’t touch-type. I just hunt and peck very, very fast with my two middle fingers, and the edges of MT3 make that… ouchy. So the couple MT3 sets I own are more for display than typing.
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For my personal opinion about MT3, see: Why I dislike MT3 keycaps
I read you prefer cupped sculptured keycaps. Perhaps you should try out SA AF. They have very nice legends, are less aggressively cupped than MT3 and they are made out of an ABS+PBT mixture. SA AF keycaps are certainly not as textured like pure PBT is, but nonetheless they are less slippy than pure ABS. Moreover, they are very cheap on Aliexpress, so definitely worth a try.
Thet have very small but deep cups with sharp edges & steep angling on some of the rows. These all conspire against a person who likes to whack the heck out of the keyboard from a great height while typing -
Funny, that’s the reason I like MT3…
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I think I’ll end up getting a set of (PBT) MT3 at some point.
The color options might be limited, but everything people have mentioned as a negative for themselves feels like it would be a positive for me.
There was another thread here making some comparisons between AF SA, MT3, SA
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SP SA-P are probably the highest quality keycaps i have seen so far,
the dye sub is very crisp with minimal bleed, they are 1.7mm thick and the texture is uniform on the top and sides unlike gmk/dcs which have a coarser texture on the top
ABS SP SA:
smooth, semi glossy finish
first shot quality is excellent, the second shot sometimes is not consistent and has some weird texture issues on a few sets (drop oblivion comes to mind, 8010 and sail seem fine)
ABS MT3:
has more texture compared to ABS SA, but still is relatiely smooth
shot quality is very shoddy and i have sets that have inconsistencies that range from thin f5 to f8, thin i, thick O etc
matteo acknowledged the problem and tried to contact drop about it but to no avail
PBT MT3:
relatively rough texture, feels like a high grit sandpaper and i love this texture
dye sub is sharp in the sets i have seen (9009, LOTR) but not as sharp as SP SA-P, more bleed than sa-p
if i were to buy a MT3 set, it would be one of the pbt ones provided there is a colourway i like (LOTR ones are sublime imo)
SP SA-P
sharp dyesub with minimal bleed, thicc caps
the texture is very smooth compared to PBT MT3, and is closer to ABS finish on MT3, feels velvet-y for lack of a better word.
if you can find a colourway you like, definitely get these
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Been toying around with SA-P for some of my custom layouts. The build your own options on SPkeyboards are pretty reasonable for the market segment. I think it was going to be about $160, but ~$20 of that was one-offs to finish out my 1800ish layout. A 60% would be $80 and a TKL $110 if you can’t find something pre-made.
There’s also the newer MTNU from the same guy who created the MT3:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/13yh27f/new_gmk_profile_mtnu_launches_today/
Also, ASA and MDA:
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Good recommendations, but personally, I am not a fan of ASA because the R4 legend surface is not facing the typist.
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