“Clicks,” “thocks” and “pings” filled the air of Bike Dog Broadway Taproom as mechanical keyboard enthusiasts showed off their favorite builds during a recent Sacramento meetup.
These meetups are rare, but when they happen, organizer Alec Valdez-Singh said people from all over the state visit.
“I've gotten people from the Bay Area to come out and I've had people fly in from Vegas,” he said during the Saturday, Feb. 22 meetup. “Someone's driving up from LA today, which is wild. It's more than I expected in the first place.”
Valdez-Singh said this was the sixth event he's organized since he started these Sacramento meetups in 2022. He wanted to give people an opportunity to show off their custom keyboards without needing to commute to the Bay Area, where these events are typically held.
“We obviously love our keyboards and want to talk about it,” he said. “We sit online and we talk about it on Discord, but it's a very empirical and physical thing to experience. So having the meetups makes the most sense.”
However, he said he has “one foot out the door” and is ready to “pass the torch” to someone else in the community to set up these events.
Guests arrive at a mechanical keyboard event Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, in Sacramento.(Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio)
So, what are mechanical keyboards?
On a standard keyboard, when you press a key, it hits one big “membrane” or pad underneath. Mechanical keyboards, on the other hand, utilize dedicated “switches” on every key giving them a distinctive click. Many enthusiasts claim this gives the keyboard a more tactile response that could help people type faster and more accurately. It’s not a necessity, but fans say it makes for a more enjoyable experience when typing.
“It's basically a really really expensive fountain pen for your computer,” Valdez-Singh said. “It's definitely a niche and it's definitely a tool, so you might as well just have a really nice one.”
According to Business Insider, there are three different types of switches — linear, tactile and clicky — that each have unique properties and sounds.
These keyboards became popular during the pandemic as more people worked from home and tried to personalize their workspaces. That's what got Valdez-Singh into them. He started building his “dream computer” to kill time and eventually realized he needed to find something else to keep him busy.
A custom keyboard on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, during a mechanical keyboard meetup in Sacramento.(Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio)
“Well, you can't do this over and over and over, and I needed something to tinker with otherwise [I was] going to lose my mind,” he said. “I started looking at desk setups and how to make your place have a better flow.”
Now, Valdez-Singh said he uses his many keyboards daily, often swapping them out for other ones throughout the day.
“It's just a different typing experience and it's something that sparks joy,” he said. “Even at my work, I'm the weird keyboard guy because I bring in a new one almost every week. I'm only in two days a week so I'll have whatever flavor of the week that I want to take with me, and I've gotten comfortable enough to just leave a keyboard in the office. I know no one's going to take it because I have the weird ones that people can't type on.”
The meetup
A few dozen keyboards, each customized with different color schemes and keys, filled several tables at Bike Dog. Guests walked around trying out each keyboard while their creators explained their inspirations.
“If you think of it like a swap meet or like a car show, it's kind of in the same vein, but for people who spend eight hours a day at their desk,” said participant Jo Viloria. “Just meeting other people, seeing what they've come up with, and I get to show off what my interpretation is.”
He got into mechanical keyboards in 2016 because he “needed a better tool” to play Team Fortress 2, a first-person shooter game he played competitively.
“It led me down this rabbit hole,” he said. “Here I am, completely disconnected from esports at this point, but the keyboard thing has just been a constant in my life.”
Since then, Viloria has participated in several mechanical keyboard meetups in Northern California and streams his keyboard building and case designs on his Twitch channel.
He, like Valdez-Singh, also takes his keyboards to work. His work gave him what he described as a 15-year-old Dell keyboard that he “could feel the age” of.
“It's a little bit of desk personalization,” he said. “You put a photo of your family, some little trinkets here and there, a little poster, and then sitting at the front of your desk is your keyboard.”
This was Aaron Nunley's first mechanical keyboard meetup despite him being a part of the community for over 20 years.
“I've seen pictures of a million keyboards, but I've never actually come to a meetup to see what other people build,” the Sacramento resident said. “I have a very specific aesthetic that I build to and a specific layout that I typically like, so it's nice to see some of these other layouts. And when you're talking between $200 and $800 to build a keyboard, it's hard to just ‘try it on.’”
Nunley was surprised Sacramento had enough people into mechanical keyboards to do a meetup, but said “It's nice to see that we have this many people in the hobby.”
Aaron Nunley shows one of his custom keyboards on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, outside of Bike Dog Brewing Company in Sacramento.(Gerardo Zavala/CapRadio)
Where to start?
People in the mechanical keyboard community will be the first to acknowledge that finding the right keyboard takes a lot of time, effort and money.
“It's overwhelming,” Valdez-Singh said. “There's so much information behind it. It's like a foreign language.”
He suggested people try to attend a meetup or ask a friend who has a mechanical keyboard for suggestions.
“You can find out about things instead of just dumping even more money into something that you might not like and then you're stuck with it,” he noted.
If meetups aren't available and friends don't have mechanical keyboards, he suggested watching mechanical keyboard streamers on Twitch to dive into the hobby before potentially spending hundreds of dollars.
But Viloria said people shouldn't trust what they see on social media because some content creators “doctor their sound” or “edit their desk to make it look as appealing as possible.”
“What you want to do ideally is go to one of these meets, talk to people and get legitimate feedback and recommendations from real people in the community rather than what influencers are trying to sell you,” he argued.
After that, he said the rest has to do with finding something that excites them.
“Make your board themed off of coffee, build your board off of botany [or] your favorite anime character,” he said. “That is what will let you build a really clear idea of what you want in a keyboard.”
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