We may all love Liberty Walk’s F40 bodykit for the Autozam AZ-1, but the corporate offers a kit for the real article Ferrari F40 too — a kit that Liberty Walk has now decided to honor with a mechanical keyboard collab. I do know, that sounds absurd, but it surely’s actually more fitting than you may think.
There’s an enormous crossover between automobile enthusiasts and keyboard enthusiasts. Sure, to many the concept of a “keyboard enthusiast” sounds comical, but the identical may be said for automobile folks within the greater world. All of us like intricate engineering projects which are dismissed by others as mere appliances. I’m not only saying this to justify my roughly five keyboards. That’s an affordable variety of keyboards to own, I swear.
The keyboard is a collab between Liberty Walk and Original Konbini, a brand that doesn’t appear to exist outside the collab. Its Instagram account has no posts before the Liberty Walk keyboard, and its website requires a password for anything greater than submitting your email for keyboard updates. “Konbini” comes from the Japanese convenience store, but transliterating the Original Konbini name into hiragana returns no results. The Drive, nevertheless, has some more info:
“It is a piece of JDM heritage that lives in your desk,” said Caleb Chandra, co-founder of Original Konbini. “We wish to bring the eagerness and delightful modifications of those machines to your space, an extension of affection for one of the vital iconic builds in recent JDM history.”
As for the keyboard itself, its case is produced from two milled blocks of aluminum that were then coated in an off-white color much like the tuner’s F40. It uses low-profile mechanical switches and keycaps, but there’s no word on who makes them or their specs. The one switch detail provided is that they’re tactile switches, meaning they’ve a noticeable engagement point which you could feel within the keystroke. Nonetheless, we do realize it’s a wired USB-C keyboard with RGB backlighting and a 75%-ish profile. For non-keyboard nerds, the latter signifies that it has function and arrow keys but no number pad or page-up and page-down buttons. The Liberty Walk livery looks great, too, with its easy black-over-white primary keys, black space bar with “Slammed” on it, and the Japanese flag on the enter key.
That name, Caleb Chandra, gives us a bit more information to go on. Chandra can also be the founding father of sleek keyboard outfit Monokei, but none of that company’s PCBs appear to match up with the brand new Original Konbini layout. The Kei seems closest, but it surely’s missing a button in the primary row — the Liberty Walk board looks original.
Most interesting is the claim of low-profile tactile switches and RGB lighting. That might mean the board uses Gateron low-profile SMD-compatible switches, either in brown or banana flavor. My day by day driver board — a custom handwired Alice-style split 60 percent — uses full-profile Gateron Milky Browns, and so they’re a superb switch. This Liberty Walk collab may find yourself feeling pretty much as good because it looks.
The worlds of cars and keyboards aren’t so different, and if this Liberty Walk collab bridges that gap then it could mean more fans of each communities. I, for one, think that’s a plus.
This Article First Appeared At jalopnik.com
