I’m officially in—I built my first custom-ish optical gaming keyboard and somehow turned a pretty rough hot-swappable board into something I actually love gaming on, for around $30 in mods. In this video I start with my old Epomaker/“Apple Maker” SK61 (the unlucky test subject), rip out the stock Gateron optical blues (they were loud and just… bad), and swap in Gateron optical yellows. I wanted to hear them completely stock first, and yeah… better than the blues, but still echoey, stabby, and kind of disgusting if you shake the board and hear springs. From there I go full noob-mode modding: clipping stabilizers, band-aid mod, a failed Holee mod attempt (duct tape was all I had), and then the mod that surprised me the most—the penny mod. Adding pennies to the case and taping them down gave the board more weight and helped kill a lot of the hollow sound. I also used foam on top of the PCB and lubed both the stabilizers and the optical yellows (with 205g—honestly not thick enough for stabs, but it still helped). I even over-lubed the switches a bit and… I kind of liked it. End result: a keyboard that sounds way better than it has any right to for the price, and a build process that was way less scary than I expected.