Like most people here, one of the main factors for me was the fact that I use a keyboard so much on a day-to-day basis that it made sense to pursue a better experience. I also enjoy doing small, detail-oriented tasks such as painting/assembling models, so it wasn’t a huge leap to things like modding switches.
The fact that the hobby “outputs” something with practical utility helps a lot as well. Not that hobbies need to have any utility at all, I just personally find it much more satisfying that my time and effort will produce a tool with use-value as opposed to a plastic model or piece of art.
And perhaps this last part will be a strange way to frame the hobby, but one of my not-so-great qualities is that I have a bit of a dilettantish streak. I really love getting into things, not so much staying into them. In a couple different ways keyboards have sort of forced me to maintain interest. Partially because GB timelines are so long but also because I use a keyboard so much day-to-day it can never be that far from my mind. I feel comfortable letting my interest wane at times, knowing that I’ll likely never stop using keyboards entirely and that there will (hopefully) always be an interesting and friendly community to check back in with.
There is so much variation and possibility in the community. I think that is what keeps us going. Many people think “one keyboard is enough”, and it is if your goal is to type, but for people who want a wonderful collection of keyboards that are all different and express different parts of them, I believe multiple keyboards really is justifiable, if that even matters to you.
It all started with my corsair breaking. A friend gave me the name of a guy who was a bit more into keebs to help me find a new one. He started me on leopold and soon I did purchase my first leo. Looking into reviews on youtube on the side there was a vid by Taeha. I watched his vids since my Tinitus always has me in need for something on the telly or PC at home (helps drown the sound in my head) and they were super long. Thus began my descend.
From then on I dreamed of a keeboard build and after I build my first I promised myself no more. Didnt really work out eh.
Why: because I like tinkering around with stuff. I love building things and then see them work.
These days there are lots of places to find unusual keyboards. Depending on where you’re located in the world, there are different easily-accessible hubs with competitive deals as well as smaller vendors, branching all the way down to private production runs of super small numbers and costing as much as a used car.
A few great places to start poking around:
KBDFans - relatively large selection, ships anywhere, beginner friendly
NovelKeys - when it’s in stock, they have a very solid entry board and all kinds of extra goodies
MechanicalKeyboards - local to my neck of the concrete woods here in Tennessee, this is a great source for quality prebuilt boards as well as some custom accessories
If you want to see all kinds of fresh stuff, take a look at ghsear.ch - our own @ajoflo coded this up as a visually-pleasing and convenient way to check out group-buys and interest-checks posted to geekhack, another proflific, if less beginner-friendly forum.