Today we have another sweet custom mechanical
keyboard build for a client, and this is the Satisfaction 75 from CannonKeys. This was sent to me from the person I’m
building it for, so the package was already opened. And inside we get a nice CannonKeys branded
sleeve. We have our keyswitches which does not come
with the kit. The PCB. An OLED panel. Some hardware. Bunch of o-rings. And two knobs. Here’s the sleeve. Pretty nice, just a simple neoprene one with
a mesh pocket at the front, which also had the rotary encoder in it. And yeh, the Satisfaction 75 is their first
premium group buy, in which 250 were made according to this card, which is quite big
for a first buy actually. And is a big step up from their practice kits,
which I’ll make a video on later. First impressions, everything looks in perfect
condition. We can see some unique looking holes on the
right side which is exciting. But as always, before you do anything, chuck
on the rubber feet so that we don’t scuff up the bottom. But let’s take it apart to have a closer
look. There’s a bunch of Phillips head screws
on the bottom. The bottom screws are fine for normal screwdrivers,
but for the remaining ones, you will need a thin one to fit inside the holes. Then there’s 3 large countersunk Phillips
head screws which hold in the brass weight. And finally, the plate is screwed to the top
piece, meaning that it is a top mount design, which in theory should provide a more even
typing experience, and also potentially provide a slightly less harsh bottom out, in comparison
to a typical tray mount design which has standoffs on the base. So here’s the 1.5mm brass plate. The sandblasted finish looks perfect. There’s no blemishes or anything, feels
great as well. We have an interesting flex cut design for
the space bar. As we can see, it has a little bit of give
towards the front, and that just softens that bottom out a touch in theory. Here’s the top aluminium piece. Looks sweet, with a typical top mount design. So we have our screw holes for the plate,
and holes to attach the bottom to the top. We also have 4 positioning pins just to help
with aligning a little bit. The bottom aluminium piece is pretty simple. There’s some recessed holes around the edge,
which just gives clearance for the screws which we’ll see when we get to the mounting. And also another rectangle recess in the bottom
right which gives clearance for a button battery. And finally the brass weight. It’s quite small, but it’s chunky and
packs a punch at about 6.5mm thick and just under 420 grams. And for reference, a typical retail full size
mech is usually just over 1kg. I think this is a first for me. The PCB was in an actual enclosed packet. Anyway here it is in blue, and we have the
Rev 1.3 PCB. Again, some funky stuff happening in the top
right corner. It’s using USB type C. And it supports MX
style keyswitches, and through hole LEDs if you want backlighting. They have a simple and easy to follow build
guide on their website. And the first thing to solder is the OLED
panel. I’ve only used these once before on the
Sol 2, and they’re pretty cool, makes it fancy and stuff. What’s nice is that they included nylon
spacers which sets the panel at the correct height, as the pins are quite long. So uh, at first, I did this the wrong way,
with the pins on the outside edge. So I had to desolder it, and have another
go. The best way to do it is to solder one far
pin, and adjust it until you get it right, by reflowing the joint. And then do the same to the pin on the other
end. Now to the soldering. Usually I recommend to test the key positions,
as the PCB offers various bottom row layouts. But if you remember looking at the plate,
the left side and the spacebar are completely fixed, so that was a waste of time. Still a good habit to have though. Stabilisers are always boring. But I did the bandaid mod to soften bottom
out, and lubed these Durock stabs with dielectric grease. And yeh, always lube your stabs. In the instructions it mentions that the stabs
do have a tight fit with the plate, which was tested with GMK screw ins. With Durock stabs, it’s super tight. It fits, but it is a little uncomfortable
putting that much pressure on the PCB. But I got it together. And now watch me struggle to put in all these
keyswitches. Some combinations of switches and plates are
harder than others in trying to get the switches properly into the plate. The problem that can occur is that when you
push in a keyswitch, the plate goes down with it towards the PCB, so you don’t have that
equal spacing between the plate and PCB. Usually I solder 1 pin for each keyswitch
in the corners, and press them in while reflowing to make sure that they’re in properly. But that doesn’t help with the middle keyswitches,
since there’s no support there So I’m interested to hear what you other
keyboard builders do. Because now that I think about it, I do have
this issue, especially since I’m very particular about putting keyswitches in 100%. So particular that I reflow and press nearly
every keyswitch just to make sure they’re all aligned perfectly. Does it make sense to do a couple in the middle
first while you still have that flexibility with the plate that you can leverage. And then work outwards? Anyway, let me know what you think. I’m probably just an absolute novice, even
thought I’m built so many boards. Oh and these are 62 or 65g Zilents, I can’t
tell. And I lubed these with Christo MCG 111 from
KeyboardTreehouse.com. It’s a thin lube that’s easy to apply. These are silent tactiles, so I didn’t want
to dampen them too much, and I think retaining the tactile bump makes sense. And lastly, here’s the rotary encoder. Simple to solder, as it only goes in one way. And in the end, you should have something
that looks a little like this. You can also clean up all the flux residue
if you want to, but that won’t impact on performance. Interestingly, we replace all the silver Philips
head screws with these black cap or hex screws. But we need that extra length so that we can
use the o-rings. They refer to this as burger mount, and it’s
essentially the same concept as gasket mount, where the plate is sandwiched between 2 o-rings. So there’s no metal to metal contact. The blacks screws also replace the silver ones
for screwing the two aluminium pieces together. Unfortunately for the two rear ones, they
weren’t gripping the bottom. They were going in, but didn’t actually
screw in, so I had to use the silver screws for those 2 spots which worked just fine. And you can’t see them anyway, since it’s
so deep. One thing you may not know about me, is that
I have like no aftermarket keysets. I have one SA set, but that’s pretty much
it. So when I do build vids and the client doesn’t
have caps yet because you know, group buys. I have to borrow sets. So a big thanks to my mate Jono for letting
me borrow a bunch for some vids. And the final touch. We have two knobs. Really difficult choice to be honest. The black and white does make perfect sense,
since it matches. But the gold is just something else, and goes
with the brass. Cannon Keys also did a collaboration with
RAMA WORKS with a special edition knob. Don’t think that’s been done before, but
it looks sweet in the pictures. And here it is. The Satisfaction 75, and it is a very satisfying
keyboard. I’m a sucker for 75% boards. I’ve really enjoyed my Singa V3, which has
a compressed 75% design that some people can perceive it to feel a little cramped. This on the other has a spaced out approach,
where we have the more traditional group of clusters. And it just changes the whole aesthetic. It feels more spacious, and even relaxed to
be honest. We get to see a bit more of the top casing,
going through the board, which gives it a bit more character. It does make it ever so slightly larger, but
still very compact for its essentially tenkeyless primary functionality. The case design has a mixture of lines. So from the top, it has quite a blocky look
with a chamfer that goes all the way round. The sides are just flat. But then they integrate this arc that joins
the two straight lines together, while keeping that butt which houses the brass weight. All of the bottom however, doesn’t have
a chamfer, so it’s pretty sharp and unrefined in my opinion. And it’s an interesting design. The board was inspired by Pirate Captain Henry
Morgan’s Flagship vessel the ‘Satisfaction’ according to the groupbuy page. I like it. It’s unique, and quite different to most
other weight designs that are usually more bold and simple. We have the deep ocean blue version, so navy
blue. Of course lighting effects how it looks, but
it’s a nice quite bright navy blue. The anodised finish is quality. No blemishes, smooth to the touch, and it
looks very even. The colour matching between the two halves
is also very good. Anyway, awesome finish, awesome colour. I believe it was originally made to match
GMK Calm Depths. I also thought I’d use that set, but they
already know what that looks like, so I went with GMK Mizu, which is inspired by the Water
Tribe in the amazing Avatar series. There were a couple of ways I could have done
this, but this is what I ended up with. The novelties are pretty sweet, but I’m
just not much of a fan of how they actually end up looking on a keyboard. Really cool keyset, and I am a huge fan of
the Avatar series. And underneath the caps, coincidentally, we
do have blue coloured stems. As said before, these are Zilent’s, so a
silent tactile switch, which has dampeners on the stem. And were lubed with Christo MCG 111. As expected, it is a quiet keyboard. The top out sound on the spacebar is pretty
loud though, so I gotta find a way to fix that. Silent tactiles, and silents in general, tend
to sound and feel a little scratchy. Even with the lube, it’s not like super
smooth or anything, and you can hear it. But it’s nice rounded tactile bump that
is quite strong, with the bump right near the top. The top mount design provides an nice even
typing experience. It’s kind of difficult to notice the subtlities
of designs of plates and mounts and such with strong tactile bumps. And like the flex cut for the spacebar, perhaps
there’s difference, but I can’t really make that side by side comparison. The stabilised keys are all good, no rattle
with any. And overall, it’s a great typing experience
as expected. Now finally on our way back to the top right
corner, we have our OLED panel and rotary encoder. Now these are legit awesome. Looking at screen, first all, aesthetic. By default it’s showing all the keyboard
information. So we have the current layer. The encoder mode. The caps and scroll lock indicators. Modifier highlights, so when we hold shift,
S lights up. And the matrix visualisation is pretty sweet,
as it shows what you’re doing in realtime. Then if we hold FN and press the encoder,
it changes to time mode. And the third and final mode is just off. Now the encoder works together with the OLED
panel. So if we hold FN and turn the encoder, we
can change the mode, and that will show on the panel. So we can do all this stuff, plus you can
have 3 custom modes. I personally just leave it on volume, and
I always find volume wheels to be awesome. But yeh, you can do whatever. And you can further customise all of that
in VIA, which is an awesome tool that applies changes instantly. And that’s it. I
really enjoyed building and actually using this keyboard for a bit. I love the spaced out layout with the clusters. I think it looks and feels great. The OLED panel and knob combination is sweet
as, and adds that cool factor to it. However, I have seen some people having issues
with them not working properly. And there is that potential. Other than that, there were the screws not
going in properly on the rear. But everything else was great, quality, build,
awesome. And it’s just a great kit from Cannon Keys. It’s still early days for them, and I know
that there will definitely be improvements on their future boards. And if you’re keen on this, let him know
in the comments, and force a round 2.
