 You've had your keyboard for a while now and things are starting to get serious. You like to take long walks in the park. You've enjoyed your fair share of candlelit dinners. You're both ready. It's time for things to go a little bit further. Welcome to the Ultimate Mechanical Keyboard Guide. Before making your move, you'll need to gather some information about your keyboard. Start by identifying your keyboard's stem. This is the part of the keyboard's exposed switch which connects it to its own keycap. Now usually these stems are unique to which switch they are on, like Cherry MX, Topper, or Alps, but luckily there are some exceptions. For example, the Razer Black Widow's Razer Mechanical switches, made by Kail, will work due to inherited Cherry MX stem compatibility. And in more extreme cases, the one we'll be showing you today, you have the Nova Touch from Cooler Master where they have adopted the stem of a Topper switch to work with Cherry MX compatible keycaps. This guide will focus on upgrading keyboards with Cherry MX switches or, in other situations, Cherry MX compatible stems because they are by far the most widely available replacement keycaps. Once you've identified your keyboard's stem, things get a lot simpler. Is your keyboard ISO or ANSI layout? This is one of the easiest things to identify by just looking at your enter key. On an ISO layout keyboard, the enter key will be taller and have a little bit of an odd shape. On an ANSI keyboard, your enter key will be flat and just a horizontal bar. Fairly straightforward. Next, you have the size of your keyboard. The two most common sizes are just a standard full-size keyboard or an 80% of the size of a standard full-size keyboard, which is also known as a 10 keyless keyboard due to the fact that it doesn't have the number keypad that you would find on a standard full-size keyboard on the right-hand side. There are also some fun but less common sizes like the 60%, sometimes referred to as poker, and a couple other sizes as well. Knowing the layout and size of your keyboard will help you buy the right amount of keycaps. And for the final bit of information, you just need to know if your keyboard is backlit or not. This won't technically restrict you in any way as you will be able to put any Cherry MX compatible keycap on top of a backlit switch, but if you want to be able to see the backlighting effect of your keyboard, it will limit your options. Now this part is all about you. What do you want? Are you looking to replace all of your keycaps? In this case, we actually have quite a few options to consider. First off, you have the type of plastic. You have three main options, starting with ABS. ABS is the most common type of plastic found in keycaps today and is probably what was on your keyboard to start with. ABS is very adaptable, allowing for things like clear lettering, which lets backletting shine through just the lettering on your keycap. The second option is if you want the entire keycap to be transparent. That is KBC. It allows for a unique look and it also allows for the entire keycap to shine while the backlight is on. And finally, if you're looking for something more textured and more durable, you'd want to check out PBT keycaps. That's my personal favorite. They can be a little bit more expensive, but some people, including myself, swear by the very subtle but definitely noticeable texture differences. Also PBT keycaps are shine resistant due to their durability, making it much more difficult for the oils in your hand to wear them away, giving them that glossy appearance that you'll find typically on old keyboards. A definite bonus. One thing I left out about these materials is the general feel. It's hard to quantify, but especially if you bottom out your keys when pressing them down, the material of your keycap can entirely change the feel of typing due to how it reacts with the base of your keyboard and its weight compared to your stock keycaps. Next, you have to decide how you want them printed. You've got some options for locations. You can have the printing on the top of the key. You can have no printing at all, leaving them completely blank, or you can even have side printing, also known sometimes as ninja printing, which results in a stylish looking blank top with the printing on the front of the keycap, just in case you need to check them out every now and then. But that's not all when it comes to printing. Now you need to pick what type of printing you actually want. First off, we have pad printing. It's extremely common due to its inexpensive application and ability to print in more than one color, but it definitely has its drawbacks as well. Not only can you feel where the keycap has already been printed, but the printing will wear away relatively quickly, which makes that feeling even more odd as the printing starts to disappear and it loses its shape. Then we come to laser etching or laser engraving, which is nice because it doesn't wear out nearly as fast as pad printing and it will last a very long time under standard environments. You can still feel the printing, but some people don't really mind this option as it generally won't change its feel much over time. Next we have dye sublimation, which is more expensive than the previous options and can only be set in one color, which is darker than the rest of the keycap as the dye has to be set into the plastic after it is formed, but it won't really wear out and can be set in multiple colors and doesn't have any noticeable textures to it. And last but definitely not least, we have double shot injection molding. This method is definitely the most expensive, but the quality is beyond question. These keycaps are comprised of two entirely separate pieces, which unfortunately limits you to only two colors, but also makes it so that the lettering will literally never wear out and also doesn't have any noticeable texture to it. Which brings us to the overall shape. You can choose between cylindrical, the most common type, flat, which is usually found on laptop keyboards, or spherical, which is mainly found on extremely old keyboards and stuff like typewriters. I hope you chose cylindrical as finding flat or spherical keycaps will be extremely difficult, to say the least. If you're only looking to replace a very small amount of keycaps, like say a couple of F keys or just your escape key, you will have many more options in the custom sections of some stores, including things like fully 3D printed keycaps in the form of skulls or pistols or some other interesting custom printing to make your keyboard uniquely yours. The job of a keyboard dampener is to reduce the clack of your keyboard, not the click. The click on a keyboard is the sound the switch makes as it actuates on a clicky switch. To help tell the difference between linear and clicky switches, click here to check out whynessasfastaspossible episode explaining the differences between Cherry MX switches. The clack on a keyboard actually doesn't have anything to do with the switch necessarily, and is just the sound your keyboard makes when you bottom out the keycap, hitting it against the baseboard of the keyboard. Starting with O-rings, the most common dampeners, there are a ton of differences. Aside from just colour, there's thickness, which is pretty self-explanatory, and durometer, or hardness. Hardness will mainly affect the travel distance, with under 2mm affecting it slightly, above 2mm affecting it in a very noticeable way. Around 2mm is recommended for, say, clicky switches, with above 2mm only really being recommended for linear switches. Then we have the durometer, which gets slowly harder starting at 40A-L onward to 50A-R, with 40A-L feeling quite squishy and 50A-R feeling not as hard as hitting the bottom of your keyboard, but still quite hard. O-rings are available in two main rubber materials, nitrile and EPDM. Don't worry about this as they're functionally the same. Moving on from O-rings, we've got soft landing pads. The main source of these soft landing pads is EliteKeyboards.com, although they can be found elsewhere, and these are rather easy to make on your own if you can find a good material. From Elite Keyboards, they come in either a firm grey or a soft black for varying effect. And lastly, we have, surprisingly enough, dental bands. The requirements for a Cherry MX O-ring is an inner diameter of 5mm and an outer diameter of somewhere around 8mm. Dental bands are inexpensive and available in many different varieties. They can be found on eBay or, honestly, just from your local dentist's office. So you've done your research and you know what's the best for both of you. You're ready to make your move, but first you need to acquire supplies. In the small, niche, but awesome world of custom mechanical keyboards, there is a surprising amount of places to buy things from. From the widely known WASD keyboards, who were kind enough to supply us with the keycaps we'll be using today, to the, wow, this really looks like this website's gonna scam me out of my money, but is actually somehow legit, Vendio Esports, also known as Qtan. For a pretty extensive list of vendors of keycaps, dampeners, and more, please check the forum link in the description down below. Once your new keycaps arrive, it's time to get down to business. When engaging in the delicate process of keycap removal, first and foremost you need to be gentle and always use the right tools for the job. You'll need preferably two keycap pullers. Wire pullers are ideal, but if you can find plastic ones, those will work too. Or even an improvised paper-based wire puller, but just don't use your fingers, a coin, a screwdriver, or anything of that nature. One precaution with removing keycaps in general is that you need to make sure that you don't pull the entire switch up off the keyboard when you do pull it. If you have a keyboard that has switches going directly into the PCB, this could be a problem, but if you have a keyboard that has switches going into a plate, which is in the middle, it should be fine, but I would just check either way that your puller is only grabbing the keycap before pulling up. PCB-mounted switches aren't all that common, but it's better to be safe than sorry. There's nothing too complicated about normal, square, alphanumeric keycaps, so just go slow and be patient. But some of the bigger ones can be a little bit trickier. First we'll go over how to remove dummy stabilizers, as they're probably the most common. All you need to do is spread your wire puller over the keycap, ensuring you are only grabbing the cap, or slide your plastic puller over the cap, which will only grab the cap. Then proceed to wiggle gently. If the keycap just won't come off for some weird random reason, grab something like a flathead screwdriver, a coin, a credit card, or your hopes and dreams, and hold down the switch below the keycap, and then continue to wiggle a little bit harder, and then hopefully the keycap will come off at that point. For the spacebar, the method is essentially the same, but you need to place a puller on each end of the spacebar and lift up equally. Having someone help you hold down your keyboard at this point would probably help. Now if you have wire-based stabilizers, things change a little bit. Most of the keys are going to be the same process as that dummy switch stabilizer keyboard we just dealt with, but the longer keys, like shift, enter, spacebar, and backspace, will all have a wire-based system which will take some dealing with. Once you've removed the keys neighboring these longer keys, you can actually start working on them directly. As an example, we will remove the spacebar, so position your keypullers on each end of the spacebar, and wiggle very, very gently. Eventually you will feel it give way from that switch that's in the very middle, but will still be attached to the exposed external wire that is going around the outside. So if you just push on one side of the keycap, it will free from that side, and then you can easily just pull it off of the other side. Be very gentle on this as well, but it should be pretty easy. Once the key is free, you'll notice pegs underneath. You should remove these with either your fingers or pliers, but don't shove something like a flathead under that little loop, as you may risk breaking it. If you are having trouble, use a flathead to pry it directly from its base, not from under the loop, and then that should actually be fine. Another thing to note is that the other wire-based stabilized keys will have a shorter wire, which will be more stiff, so be ready to press a little bit harder on the side of the keycap when you're freeing it from the wire. So at this point, all of your keycaps have been removed. If this is a keyboard you have been using for quite a while, this will be a great time to do some keyboard maintenance. So grab some canned air, a compressor, or a data vac, and give your keyboard a good air-based spray down to get some of the chunkier parts out of there. For more delicate cleaning, you can use a clean cloth and a small amount of water, or isopropyl 99% alcohol. But please note that if your keycaps are UV-coated, you should only use the water. Alcohol can eat away UV-coated. Also, if the casing is starting to yellow, you can use Windex, which only furthers my theory that Windex can pretty much clean anything. Another thing to note is that if you happen to break any small pieces throughout the entire upgrade of your keyboard, you can grab replacement inserts, wires, or even entire switches from WASD keyboards. And some other places as well, which will be linked in the forum discussion, which you can find linked under the video down below in the description. When lubing up your keyboard, you really only need to lube up specific spots along the stabilizer bars or on the inserts and stuff like that. And even then, the amount of lube required is very low. The guide I usually use on how much lube to use is pretty much equivalent to the head of a computer case screw. I have many of them laying around and it's just pretty easy to access. All I can really stress here is that less is more. It's easy to add a little bit more lube later on, but it can be very annoying to take it off. The lube I would recommend is Finishline Extreme Fluoro. It is 100% Teflon grease-based lube that is widely used by bike, knife, and gun enthusiasts, and apparently keyboard enthusiasts as well, as it is already widely recommended almost everywhere on the internet for switch stabilizer lubricant. Some enthusiasts recommend re-lubing your keyboard every 6-12 months, but as I don't really expect many of you to do that, try to at least do it when you're swapping your keycaps out, like now. Finally, we are at installation. Surprisingly enough, possibly one of the easiest parts of this entire process. For this part, turn on your PC, fire up a word processor, and then proceed to press each button on your keyboard to check what it does before putting the appropriate keycap on. Just kidding, grab a spare keyboard, use this video, or maybe look up a picture reference online to find the proper keycap placement, take it slow, and you'll be fine. Now if you bought some O-rings or dental bands before, you have to install your keycaps with those first, so you'll need to push the ring or band onto the cylinder underneath the cap. After you've installed all the rings or bands, you just proceed like normal, but this time push a little bit harder once the switch is installed to make sure that the dampener or O-ring is pushed all the way up into the cap. If you bought dampening pads, all you need to do is place those pads around each switch before installing your keycaps like normal. If you have a common dummy stabilizer-based keyboard, the process of installing keys is quite simple. All you have to do is line up the cylinder under the keycap with the stems on your switches and push down gently. If you have wire-based stabilizers, it's just the reverse of uninstalling them. Most of the keys will be the same as the installation process of the dummy stabilizers, but whenever you have long keycaps like spacebar, you will need to install the pegs that you removed from the previous keycaps with the long part of the peg facing the back of the cap. Then you need to stand the wire up on the keyboard and hook one of the insert pegs onto the wire. Then push in the direction of the hooked-in end and then hook in the other side. Once you have each side hooked in, you just need to push down on the key gently onto the key switch and voila! You're done! Alright guys, while I give you a chance to enjoy some sexy glam footage of our freshly recapped CM Storm Novatouch TKL, I'd like to thank CM Storm for sponsoring this guide. The Novatouch TKL we featured here is pretty unusual in the fact that it features premium Topar switches but with Cherry MX STEM compatibility, which made it pretty fun to play around with all day today. Thanks, CM Storm, and thanks to you guys for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and like this video and possibly dislike this video. And if it's too hard to express your feelings and likes and dislikes like Linus says, comment in the video down below. And also, if you guys want more information on where to buy all this kind of stuff, check out the link in the description to the forum of this video. While you're checking out that description, check out that forum topic and go over to the forum and comment there. If you don't like the ads, become a contributor, which gets rid of all the ads. If you want one of these shirts, like the one I'm wearing right now, check out the link in the description of this video as well. And don't forget to change your Amazon book link things with the guide on the forum so that we get some kickbacks when you buy some Amazon stuff. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed how you thought my first ultimate guide went and I'll see you next time.