I've been using my Moonlander for a few years now and am quite satisfied. But over time I started noticing I seem to prefer lower switches. What to do?

I use the Moonlander daily, and I've built a smaller keyboard to use on the go - maybe one day a week. The one I have now is this Rev57LP with Choc v1 switches:

A year with Rev57LP

A year ago I replaced my previous keyboard with a new one: the Rev57LP from 42. Keebs. I chose the black kit with orange acrylic colors. Unlike all my previous self-made keebs, this one had wireless support built in. (I had to hack it in for all the previous ones.

Rapture in Everythingzblesk

I can't really type without bottoming the switches out, and over time it started feeling like typing on the Moonlander is both slower and less comfortable.

This post describes how I ended up with a working solution.

Looking for alternatives

I started looking for alternatives. I found a few interesting ones while browsing the web, or from the good folks at the ZMK discord. I ended up not taking this route, but if you want, some that looked interesting were: choc-spaced Lily58, Halcyon Elora, Iris CE, the good old Sofle (with maybe a few upgrades), and ZSA's Voyager.

None of them were as ergonomic as the Moonlander, though (at least not without further mods); and the Voyager also costs way more than I can spend.

After an embarrassingly long time, I thought - hey, since I basically just want a low-profile Moonlander, why not try changing the switches to low-profile ones?

ZSA to the rescue

After some searching, I found switches that looked like they could be used, but I wasn't sure, and buying a bunch of them over time in low quantities to experiment would take ages and cost money I don't have.

Then I had a brilliant idea: why not try contacting the support of ZSA?

To be clear: I bought my Moonlander from them, but that was almost 3 years ago and I had no reasonable expectation of any kind of support, even if my questions were covered by warranty. But in true ZSA fashion, they responded within hours and had useful info. Turns out they were working on a blog post on this exact topic. Talk about serendipitous timing! (They've since posted it, read here.)

They said that the only ones that really matched the sockets were Outemu Low-Profile switches, with Tai-Hao Thins keycaps. Those wouldn't have been my first choice of switches, so that's some money saved right there. And it seems to me literally no other company except Tai-Hao is making caps that fit this specific use case.

Turns out they don't have a cap set I can use, though.

Tai-Hao saving the day

I didn't really care whether my keys would end up with legends on them or not. I don't really need them. As long as they'd let the backlight shine through, I'm fine. I've also found out that they're the company that manufactures the official Moonlander caps, so I wasn't worried about quality.

But none of the caps in the Thins low-profile series were good for me. The sets with letters on them had cap selections that didn't match my needs (too few keys altogether, too many keys with legends I won't use, such as CTRL, CMD or ALT). And the blank ones were only sold in cream beige or light gray, which would look bad on my black keyboard. (They've since added a very good-looking orange and gray, though.)

One of the sets was pretty close, though, so I decided to try mailing Tai-Hao directly. And soon enough I got a response telling me they're willing to put up a specific shop listing with what I need. That was pretty cool, not gonna lie.

So I ended up buying this set:

The Tai-Hao Thins Low Profile Keycaps

The Tai-Hao Thins Low Profile Keycaps ,DoubleShot Keycaps,Gaming Keycaps, DoubleShot PBT Keycaps,DoubleShot ,ABS Keycaps,ErgoKeyboard,diy keyboard

and asked them to sell me a separate package of just the blank caps from that set.

My last problem was that I'm using an exotic layout, so I expected issues with homing keys; but it turned out they have a matching set of homing keys for the Colemak layout, which happens to match my Savetier.

Whoopsie

Did you know the Outemu Low-Profile switches come in two varieties, one of which has a pinout incompatible with MX layout? Neither did I. Imagine my surprise when they didn't fit at all. 😅

So I ordered them again: these Red ones fit perfectly.

Price; putting it all together; tl;dr

All in all (and including postage), the switches from Aliexpress cost me about 23€. The Tai-Hao caps from Taiwan cost approximately 70€. Not cheap, but much cheaper than a new high-quality keyboard.

We don't like wasting learning opportunities in this household, and since all three kids were interested, I let them do most of the work:

The youngest one managed de-capping; the middle one also removed switches. We all did tests together to see if every key worked; then the oldest one enjoyed looking at a live keymap (via Keymapp), setting new caps and doing the last round of tests.

Here are some more pictures with side-by-side comparisons, end results, etc.

I wondered whether the difference would be big enough to mess with my muscle memory, but it wasn't. Maybe with one exception: apparently my subconsciousness learned which set of combos and chords to use based on the switch height, and since Moonlander now feels a lot more like the Rev57LP, I occasionally attempt to hit a key combo Moonlander doesn't have. (Incidentally, I much prefer the ZMK firmware to the QMK-based one, partly because of how it handles combos. But that's neither here nor there.)

All in all, I'm very happy with how this turned out. I really like the feel of the keyboard now, and it seems I'm typing a little bit faster, as well. (Don't ask me how or why. I do realize the actual physical parameters of the switches aren't that big. 🤷🏻‍♀️) And I can only recommend ZSA, their blog, and Tai-Hao. 👍🏻

PS: completely off topic, but I got these pokémon caps as a birthday gift from a friend, and I think the colors match the Moonlander quite nicely. 😄