Hi everyone, I've been lurking here for a while and caught the bug for a mechanical keyboard. Initially I was looking at a Filco and found the distributor a few streets from my home, but alas they gave up on stocking it due to high prices and low demand. Found Alpha_Tay posts here, but he also has no stock.

In the end I took Horns suggestion (thanks Horns) to consider Varmilo and am now the proud owner of my first mkb, a custom VA87M.

I ordered direct from Varmilo and griited my teeth to agree to the exorbitant shipping fee via FedEx. Basically USD130 for KB and 30 for shipping. Ouch, ouch, ouch. But I don't care now.

I really like the feel of the MX Brown's. Smooth, light and quick. And the delicious sound the keys make. It reminds me of a keyboard that I can't remember... from long, long ago... back in the mainframe days.

I tested all the keys including caps lock and scroll lock LEDs. The scroll lock LED was troublesome as not much uses it. I'm on Linux, so opened a Virtual Terminal (VT) and ran a "ls - R /" to test. I've read gaming keyboards use scroll lock to control the LEDs, so if you are on Linux you might try opening a VT to configure them.

Yeah, I guess I'm a bit late getting into the mkb scene.

I read about the legends wearing off Filco's Keycaps pretty quick, so in the end I'm glad to have a Varmilo, and being able to choose the colours for each key separately was the deciding point.

Yeah, I did that recently for my TKL. My post with pics is on page 68 here.

Their website is a bit clunky, but you can choose switch type and key cap colours etc per key easy enough.

They use FedEx, so the shipping cost is high.

You may email Vicky zhh22@zhihaihe.cn to discuss your order.

Edit: One thing I regret not doing, since I was customising they keys anyway, is not choosing each of the different switch types for say the functions keys. That way I could have my own test of all the current cherry switches for future reference. I wonder if some keys like "enter", that I hit with gusto at times, might benefit from a switch with higher activation force and maybe more clicky to add to the sense of satisfaction.

This post has been edited by MrGuinness: Aug 10 2019, 12:05 PM

I can't read or write Mandarin. I did look into SGshop, but as horns said, those sites don't provide access to customisations and I didn't want pandas or flowers on my keycaps. In the end the fact I got exactly what I wanted from varmilo direct, thereby cutting out any middleman doubts and repackaging seemed worth it. Especially after spending months hunting a new mkb, I just wanted the frustration to end and happy days to start.

Yes, there is an English section, but honestly not much of interest in there for me. If you get some LEDs the instructions would be useful.