Introduction

The “Building a Keyboard” series on TechPowerUp has been an exercise to showcase various DIY components in the world of custom keyboards, and how you can make your own from parts that come together easier than assembling a PC. This has become extremely simple over the last couple of years with the development of hot-swap switch sockets, to where the series has also become a way to cover products sent for review that are not complete keyboards. This happens to be the case today whereby MOONDROP appreciated my detailed and extremely popular review of its first keyboard—the innovative DASH75—and requested I cover its switches too. I just so happened to be sitting on a keyboard kit and keycap set that all worked together quite well.

As of the time I write this article, MOONDROP has two switches under its name in the form of the linear Lunalight we saw previously in the DASH75 review as well as the tactile Tessence—don’t ask me if the starting letters are based on the switch type. These switches came about after a collaboration with the keyboard design and manufacturing studio G-Square and I had been quite curious about them. Akko, on the other hand, is a brand we’ve covered extensively with its neat designs and themed keyboards that employ a variety of form factors and materials alike. It got into the DIY space with some fantastic keyboard kits, of which we have previously talked about the gasket mount MOD 003 as well as the acrylic stack ACR 75. Today we examine the MOD 004 which is a less expensive version of the MOD 003 that foregoes the gaskets but retains a premium build nonetheless. The keyboard is made complete with Epomaker’s Sailing keycap set which aims to be an inexpensive Cherry profile ABS plastic set that gives different shades of blue and white to match the other components fairly well. There’s a lot to unpack, literally, so let’s thank MOONDROP, Akko, and Epomaker for providing all the parts before we get on with it!