I just received my Norbauer case and I am planning to mod my Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro S with some Kailh Box switches.
The original stabilizers that came with the keyboard are a rattling disaster, and I thinking of replacing them with the ones from Zeal.
Problem is I have never changed stabilizers before. So I have absolutely no clue.
Question, are the stabilizers only replaceable with the removal of the plate? The stabilizers that came on the keyboard seem like the usual ones, so I am assuming the Zeal ones would be a direct replacement.
No Zeal’s stabilizers will not work on your plate as it is cut for plate mount stabilizers & Zeal’s stabilizers are PCB mount screw in ones. Basically the hole in the plate is not big enough to let Zeal’s stabs come up through them & also I doubt the PCB has the mounting holes needed for PCB mount stabs. I would suggest going with genuine Cherry plate mount stabs, clip & lube them before installing them then you’ll have nice & quiet stabs!
Also even if your board could use Zeal’s stabs you’d have to de-solder the whole thing to install them, while with plate mount stabs you’ll only have to de-solder the switch they are stabilizing to replace them.
No problem! Yep, once you remove say the space bar switch the stabilizer for it will be able to be pulled up & out by pressing in the the locking tabs behind the cross mount on both sides of the stabilizer. That’s the one nice thing about plate mount stabs, they are installed from above the plate. From the pics you put up it looks the locking tabs will be on the north facing side of your space bar stab. Usually the locking tabs are on the opposite side of the where the stabilizer wire sits.
Yeah I was hoping the Cruciformer would be out by now myself. You can do it yourself with a small & very sharp chisel, but it would probably be very hard to keep any type of uniformity doing it that way. The other thing I have heard is people using a metal key cap to shave the stems down, although I’d imagine that would be a long & tedious process as well. Personally I ended up selling off all my old stock BOX switches other than the BOX Navies I got in a ACR60 build. Fortunately those ones are on the smaller side of the original tolerances & I can use Maxkey SA caps on them without having them stretch or crack.
I hope it will be out soon… I love the box switches too much. I have a pile of burnt orange, pink and navies just waiting to be used on my other keyboards. My current keyboard has the pale blues installed with PBT keycaps and that seems to resolve the problem. But PBT keycaps aren’t as pretty as the GMK ones.
It should hopefully be coming soon, last time I checked the thread on here @norbauer offered to help @rud find a a machine shop that can get them made sooner than later. So hopefully with his help rud can get the project moving forward again!
I’ve tried the RAMA stab mod and I’m undecided on it, but it’s worth mentioning. I just happened to have a lot of heatshrink tubing in the right size so I’ve tried it out – it dampens but doesn’t firmly reduce keyfeel.
Also, my tool, Cruciformer (for fixing BOX stems and Nexus sliders) is going to pre-order in the next couple weeks! I’m super excited, and you can hit the IC form here.
