My journey for a silent travel-board started with a green Tofu 60 keyboard I had made totally silent. It had plate foam, DIY case foam, and even switch foam pads from KBDFans foam. I was after a totally silent board, and this one was damn quiet. For those who don’t know, the foams are there to attempt to asborb as much sound as possible. As for the switch foam, I don’t know if it did anything. It’s similar to the PE Foam many boards these days are coming with, which isn’t used to silence but to “marbleize” their keyboard, or whatever.

I’ve only tried two silent switches, the Boba U4s and the Durock Shrimp, or Durock Silent Tactile. As I prefer the slightly less overwhelming tactility of a Durock T1 to a Boba U4T, it’s not surprising I prefer the Durock silents. Not only this, but they felt crisper somehow, despite having similar silencing pads on the stem. The Bobas felt mushy to me, though I think they’re a great switch anyways, and probably perfect for a lot of people. I don’t enjoy typing on linears, so I haven’t tried any silent linears. I imagine they would be a tiny bit quieter than silent tactiles since tactile bumps make ever so slight noise (this is speaking very broadly and I am not an expert on acoustics of different switches, so take it with a grain of salt).

• Something I learned in this process was a little trick I can use with any board, for stabilizer tuning. I don’t know about you but sometimes it’s a little difficult for me to discern the exact point at which a stablizer doesn’t rattle. You are tuning your stabs with a syringe, adding a little and then testing, and so on. You don’t want to add too much and gum up the works so to speak. So, I pop out my stab switches and plop in some Durock Shrimps and then tune my stabilizers. This way you know what’s stabilizer rattle and what is switch noise (or in this case the lack of) you know precisely when the stabs have enough lube.

The Durocks feel good to me. They are one of my favorite switches, made silent. I put headphones on and I couldn’t really tell these were silent by noticing a lot of mushiness. They just mostly feel like regular T1 tactiles. With the Durocks, all you hear is an almost inaudible thump. Being in a Tofu, the typing feel is very stiff. I used a polycarbonate plate to try to make the feel a little softer as well as not add metal that might ping and ruin the silence of the board. I have heard POM plates are even quieter than PC, and I want to test that assertion at some point. Using such quiet switches, it might not matter which plastic plate I chose. It does feel slightly less like a brick with the PC plate making it just a tiny bit more soft and bearable. I prefer softer typing feel like that of a gummy worm gasket board.

The Tofu is obviously very simple, but looks good. It’s minimal and seems well anodized (I was actually surpised at how nice it was, coming from the Bakaneko), in the dark green color. Otherwise, it’s pretty basic as Tofu is. For a travel board, it’s not ideal though. It’s too heavy in my opinion. I don’t forsee the Tofu holding up too well. It would get scratched, and then there would be super noticeable silver streaks.

It’s a rectangle wedge that really doesn’t get simpler. This is the basic bitch of Keyboards but if you are just looking for something simple then its simplicity won’t bother you. It has a seamless design, which I can appreciate after hating the Tofu HHKB, and thank god it has a discrete plate unlike the HHKB.

It gets a little more flex and play if you dremel off the middle standoffs like I did and mount the PCB between two silicone O-rings, like I did. I have some plan to use my Weirdflex Wilba PCB to let the middle flex.