Today I'm going to write about my experience of modding the Keychron V1. Started off by taking out all switches and removed the back case with the provided hexagonal wrench. Then I removed the screws that attached the inner components to the case. One thing to be careful is the top left switch, it's a small component but can get caught if the inner and outer part is not in the same position. I then separated the PCB from the metal plate but the provided screwdriver is tiny and provides zero leverage so it helped to use one with a bigger handle. There's also quite a lot of screws in this keyboard so some means of holding them temporarily is necessary.

The back of the case is filled with a rubber silicone pad which I suspect is the source of the mid-range sound profile. There's almost no leeway in this area so you have to remove this pad if you want to place sound dampening material like for the polyfill mod.

Switch Pads

I installed these switch pads by kbdfans. This mod is supposed to serve the same purpose as the foam mod in which you place a foam sheet with holes between the PCB and plate. Aligning these pads individually is insanely hard so I used a trick in which I place the pad onto a switch with the non-adhesive side, then install the switch for perfect alignment onto the PCB. The result of this mod is a marble-like sound and softer touch when bottoming out.

Stabilizers

For the stabs I tried the Plumber's mod which is kinda like the opposite of the Holee mod; Whereas the Holee mod reduces rattle by placing tape on the inside of the stabilizer housing, the Plumber's mod involves wrapping tape around the end of the metal wire. I feel like these functionally serve similar purposes but the latter requires much less dexterity. The Keychron stabilizer housings don't have much tolerance so one rotation of tape around the wire was sufficient. The tape combined with the usual dialectic grease was able to get rid of all the rattle from the spacebar. I ended up having to apply more grease after screwing the switches in which is commonly done using a syringe but since I didn't have one I nudged the grease in with a brush. One thing to note is that both these modifications add resistance to the stabilizer keys so overdoing the grease could make them heavy, balance is key.

Edit December 2024: I decided to remove these after a while and only use dielectric grease for the stabilizers since I wanted less resistance. There's a bit of rattle because of it but I ended up prioritizing the functionality of a light spacebar.

Switches

For switches I went with the Everglide Sakura Pink V2's, factory-lubed 35 gram linears. After trying out various weights in the past I've come to the conclusion that I much prefer lighter switches to heavier ones. When typing for longer periods I want the least amount of resistance and the 35 grams combined with the switch pads makes it feel like I'm tapping on a cloud.

Keycaps

For keycaps I went with the air-wave by Deadline Studios (¥13,200). They are blue transparent plastic keycaps that are very smooth on the surface. They blend with the color of the keyboard so they look darker on this V1 compared to if they were used in a white build. I also wish these things had markers on the index keys but otherwise aesthetically, they look really good.

Conclusion

This is the first time I tried out switch pads but the soft touch and sound is a pretty addicting quality. I think going forwards, stabilizer lubing, light switches and switch pads will be my baseline permanent mod options for custom keyboards.