My current keyboard is the Corne LP from BoardSource. My first purchase from them was so good that I ordered a second as a backup, and because they had a new purple case.
I don’t quite remember how I found out about BoardSource, it must have been from a Discord about keyboards. I looked at a few other vendors, but again, few vendors offer assembled keyboards. And I wanted a low profile board, coming from the Sofle v2 which was just too big for me.
Their ordering page was intimidating to a newcomer like myself. You have to pick out all the parts yourself manually, and hope you didn’t make any mistakes.
In their Discord, they are very supportive about this though. The more seasoned keyboard fans in their Discord encourage newcomers to post screen shots of their order, to confirm that nothing is missing. This was super helpful.
BoardSource’s inventory at the time only had their Purpz switches. Because of my bad experience with the Moonlander, I wasn’t ready for switches as light as the Purpz. So I ordered Choc Reds from another website.
When the board arrived, it still required some assembly. This was surprising as a newcomer since I had paid for assembly. I was so confused, that I posted a picture of the shipment to their discord.
And they said, “Yep, that’s assembled.”
To them, assembly means soldering only, not full assembly. I squeezed the switches into the plates and screwed the plates to the case. In light of the damage sustained by the Ergomech Sofle v2, it makes sense that they don’t want to ship a fully assembled product.
After assembly, one of the keys wasn’t working. They did the best they could: they paid for shipping the faulty PCB back to them, fixed it, and shipped it back to me.
When they shipped it back to me, they also included the extra homing keys that they left out of the original shipment.
I learned how to use QMK to program the Corne LP with the Miryoku layout. And again, folks from BoardSource’s Discord helped answer questions that the QMK docs didn’t cover.
It works. It’s small. It’s elegant.
I’m happy.
Since all the other keyboards I have don’t really work for me, I was scared that if something happened to my keyboard, I wouldn’t have a working keyboard to use. And since shipping takes at least a week, I needed a backup on hand.
And then BoardSource reveals a new purple case. And it looks so pretty and so purple.
This is the perfect time to get a backup.
I buy it.
Also I purchased their Purpz switches, since the Choc Reds started to feel a little heavy.
The Purpz switches feel so good, especially combined with Work Louder’s Blind keycaps.
Both times I got the ‘Elite-C’ to connect to my laptop with USB-C. And that’s worked out great for me.
BoardSource delivered high quality products quickly. And they quickly fixed the issues that came up.
In addition, the BoardSource community in their Discord was so helpful. They helped navigate the ordering process. They helped answer QMK questions afterwards. And their #photos channel always has nice photos of what folks have been building.