tag · layout

#75%

6 articles tagged #75%.

Every #75% piece

How 75 percent became the default custom layout

Two years ago a custom-board recommendation defaulted to 65% with a polite note about 75% as the next step up. The KBD75 v3's staying power as a default recommendation, the QK75, and a crowded mid-tier have flipped that order. 75% is now the layout customs reach for first.

thockApr 24, 20265 min read

Five keyboard case silhouettes drawn in warm-grey stroke, arranged left to right from 60% up to full-size, each adding back one key cluster, with an amber measuring bracket beneath marking the width each size gives back to the desk.

Guides

Keyboard layout sizes, compared: 60% to full-size, which fits your desk

60%, 65%, 75%, TKL, full-size — the names read like a settled taxonomy, but each cut trades away a specific cluster of keys for a specific amount of desk space. Here's what a reader actually keeps and gives up at each size, and how a firmware layer changes the math.

thockAug 22, 20268 min read

Line-drawing comparison of five keyboard case silhouettes shrinking left to right — full-size with numpad, tenkeyless, 75%, 65%, and 60% — arranged like a family tree with a bronze accent dot marking the 60% case as the root the other compact sizes branch from.

Deep Dives

How the 60% became the default custom-keyboard layout

Every custom-keyboard buyer's guide since the mid-2010s opens with the same four-term vocabulary — 60%, 65%, 75%, TKL — as though it always existed. It didn't. One open-source PCB out of a geekhack thread is most of the reason that taxonomy exists at all.

thockJul 29, 202611 min read

Ideas

Pairing Oil Kings with the Mode Sonnet

This pairing has been on the bench for months, and a free Sunday finally made it happen. The Sonnet is a soft 75 with a block mount, and Oil Kings are a heavy factory-lubed linear — together they hit a register worth coming back to.

thockMay 7, 20265 min read

Near-monochrome top-down line silhouette of a 75% keyboard case with a single warm-bronze accent dot at the bottom right standing in for the new R2 accent-weight finish.

News

Mode Sonnet R2 opened at CannonKeys

Mode's second round of its 75% Sonnet board ran at CannonKeys from 2026-06-01 through 2026-07-15 after a vendor-side timeline shift. See the in-article update for the dates and accent-weight color options; the closed entry is archived at /group-buys/past.

thockMay 6, 20265 min read

Cross-section silhouette of a keyboard showing a floating plate held by four gasket pads, with a fine amber accent line tracing the separation between plate and case top.

Ideas

What gasket mount actually delivers (and what it doesn't)

The label appears on keyboards at every price point, from $90 prebuilts to $350 group-buy customs, but two boards with identical spec-sheet language can sound nothing alike. Here is what the term actually tells you, and what it doesn't.

thockApr 19, 20269 min read

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