Hi guys, I will be moving to the US pretty soon so I want to ask for your opinions on reputable vendors for GBs in general. I do tend to buy GMK/SP keycaps a lot so any reputable vendor is appreciated. Moreover, I will live in FL so I was wondering is the shipping fees will be a lot? Thanks.
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Novelkeys is excellent. So is Divinikey. CannonKeys is fine, though I have seen a handful of complaints about their QA, they still have an extremely good reputation. Never bought from Omnitype, but I hear they’re good too. Signature Plastics has always been amazing for me, sometimes shipping same-day.
Avoid Kono; they’ve had issues for years, and I’m not even sure if they’re still functioning as a vendor, since their site hasn’t been updated and group buys haven’t shipped for so long.
I’ve personally never had any issues with in-stock purchases from Vala Supply, but they’re far behind in shipping group buys, and have had lots of recent extreme fire sales of 40-50% off, that make it seem like they might be having cash flow problems. (MyKeyboard and MKUltra did the same before going under.)
When in doubt, check Alexotos’s vendor list, which is pretty well-maintained:
EDIT: In terms of shipping, most of these places charge $7-12 shipping for the continental US, unless you hit their free shipping minimum, which can often be $100-$300, depending on the vendor.
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I like CK a lot and have had very good experiences. They’re pretty much my primary store; almost all my boards are from them. I agree re: NK and Divinikey as well. Also had a good experience with Omnitype and would buy from them again but more limited experience. Keebs for All has been fine for me with some switch purchases, but I’ve heard some regard their responsiveness and shipping times as hit or miss. It’s been a while for me.
Edit: Oh! Mechanicalkeyboards.com is also good! They mostly have prebuilts but can come through in a pinch. They have some surprising switch options, for example.
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A couple more US vendors I can recommend: I get all my handwiring parts and controllers from Keeb.io. I’ve got a few boards from Mode Designs that are incredibly well-made. Invokeys has plenty of good switches. All of these places have shipped within a day or two, and I’ve never had issues with any of them.
And then there’s Drop; their group buys can often be delayed and shipping is slow, but they do eventually get things to you. I haven’t used them in ages since they kind of veered away from enthusiast keyboard offerings to more gamer-targeted stuff.
Also, avoid OhKeycaps; they turn up in a ton of Google searches for keycaps, especially SA ones, but are a zombie store that hasn’t shipped anything in over two years. They’ll just take your money and ghost you.
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I’ve never had problems with SpaceCables (spaceholdings.net) or Mekibo either though they don’t host that many GB’s as the others mentioned, and the pricing is usually a bit higher (especially Mekibo).
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K̶o̶n̶o̶ g̶o̶t̶ b̶o̶u̶g̶h̶t̶ o̶u̶t̶ b̶y̶ A̶p̶o̶s̶, and IIRC was created by a (Mass)Drop co-founder LOL
They did? I thought I saw the Apos president on Kono’s Discord recently, saying he had been trying to reach them to find out what was going on without any success. Apos did take on some of their inventory, but I didn’t think they bought the company.
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For switches, milktooth is a great option and based in the US.
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oh, I thought Apos took over the entire business LOL cause after the last time I visited Kono I got bombarded with Apos marketing emails
glad I got out of the Keystone kickstarter, it was such a drag
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The whole situation is weird. I thought the same thing, until I started weeding through their Discord to see what was happening. I wonder if they’ll update the site eventually to push all the outstanding groups buys to “arriving Q4” instead of Q3.
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