Mechanical Keyboards

Go to a meet up if you can and try out different boards, switches, key cap profiles, talk to owners etc. before you spend any significant sums. Impact of key cap profile and materials is often underrated.

If you cant then switch testers and "cheap" 3d printed or acrylic boards are a decent way to try different layouts, especially if you can sell them once you finished with them. Sure you can skip this step if you know the exact layout you want, but I didn't.

Learn what types of switches you prefer, if you like them lubed, filmed, ball bearing mod, stem swapped, etc. is worth the effort. As is getting good at stabs.

I think another fundamental is deciding if you are one and done or you will keep buying boards. Buying keyboards then building them is the hobby for me, I have loads, more than 50. If its the former then you want to spend longer nailing down what you want, the latter it doesn't matter so much.

Its snobby but mass market boards are ok, just ok. I would much rather have something more premium, with a bit more thought around it. It is more risk than buying from your average shop though, and you need to do proper research into the GB runner, even then they can exit scam (ask me how I know).

Being able to decide everything you want for a board, mounting style, plate material (or even no plate), switches, how they lubed, if they filmed, what stabs you use, what keycaps, all make fundamental differences to a boards sound and behavior. Getting that how you want it can take time.

I looked into building my own keyboard, and then realized there are some excellent hobbyist tier keyboards that are 99% of what I would have wanted from building myself for like 30% of the cost.

I’m using the Hexgears Gemini Dawn right now, and I’m quite happy with it, but if I were to get a new one today I might go with something that supports QMK like the Massdrop CTRL.

The main 2 features I look for are hot-swappable switches and programmable firmware. Personally I like an aluminum frame and look for that as well.

You’ll pay about $100 for a prebuilt vs like $500 for building it yourself

My keyboard has a few modes of backlight. Most of them are crazy shit without any purpose. I can't disable them programmatically as their shitty shitware doesn't work under Linux. So after every reset/turn-on I cyclically run through those blimping abominations of backlight modes.

I miss old IBM or Mitsumi keyboards that were just keyboards.

@alehel I wish I would have been bolder, chosing a smaller size. I took me 3 or 4 boards to realize how cozy a 60% board can be, if you configure it right.
Also, having opensource keyboard firmware like QMK is vital for longterm support as well as being able to freely configure layers and other stuff.

There are well known and respected brands for keyboard bases, switches and caps. Combining those should yield fine mechanical keyboards with a satisfying level of customization.

I personally am very happy with my combo of Glorious GMMK base, Glorious Fox Heavy switches and Cerakey ceramic keycaps. I ordered some other switches with even more resistance and since compatibility is high for all widely popular components, replacing them should not be an issue.

Ok, so you said put together your own keyboard, that involves soldering. However it's very likely you don't need to.

Finding which switches you like is a good first step, as a general rule I think there's only 3 types of switches you should worry about, let's call them Red, Brown and Blue since that's the colors Cherry MX uses for them so they're sort of the standard. Red are fully linear, i.e. they feel the same from start to bottom. Browns have a small bump midway through (when the switch activates). Blues are like Browns but they also make a click sound. Only choose colicky switches if you have a room for yourself, they can be VERY annoying to other people, be considerate. That being said it's personal preference, I personally like Browns although I have used Reds and honestly I don't feel that much of a difference.

Next important is figuring out the size you want, do you plan on moving it a lot? If so a smaller form size might be better.

Then there are some ergonomics, personally I love Split ortholinear keyboards, you can buy premade ones but for me it was cheaper to build one for myself, but I'm okay with soldering. That being said if you're going to solder, I STRONGLY recommend you get a nice modern USB-C pen style soldering iron, I bought a cheap one from Amazon and it was very difficult to use, didn't heated up properly and had a very large tip (the small one never got hot enough to melt the solder).

Thankfully when I first got into mechanical keyboards the flood of the cheap slop hadn't happened. So like worst keyboard you'd find is like a sturdy plastic housing with a metal backplate.

Switch tester to find what you like. Then buy once cry once. Don't get gamer garbage, find one that works out of the box the way you want. Maybe QMK so you can program it once to do what you want, then you never need the software ever again.