Seneca: the first synthesized keyboard from Norbauer & Co. I’m hoping to make a few more keyboards
As wild as it would be to reinvent the stabilizer and the switch just to make a few hundred seven-pound keyboards for rich coders, Norbauer plans to make other keyboards, now that he has the “full stack” of switches, stabilizers, and firmware and isn’t constrained by the handful of layouts available in Topre keyboards.
This is how you get the Seneca, the first keyboard from Norbauer & Co. It has a plasma-oxide-finished milled aluminum chassis, a solid brass switchplate, custom capacitive switches, the best stabilizers in the world (also custom), spherical-profile keycaps with appropriately retro-looking centered legends, zero backlighting, and a completely flat typing angle.
I think of my vision for what we are doing as being a camera company, like Leica. They do crazy things that wouldn’t happen otherwise. I think it’s a very technically interesting thing. There’s obviously a tiny audience for it. In order to make it in a decent way you have to pay a lot of money, because how many people are going to buy it? I am happy that it exists in the world.
He doesn’t want to sell a lot of keyboards. In fact, not selling a lot of keyboards is part of the plan. He sold 50 of them last summer, sight unseen, in a private preorder for a group of previous clients — paying beta testers, essentially. Right now he’s selling another 150 or so “First Edition” keyboards, to be delivered in late summer. Then he’ll probably do another batch. And another one after that. But he’s not going to sell a million.
The stabilizer problem was tackled while he was working on the switches. Stabilizers are the mechanisms that connect to long keys, like the space bar, shift, enter, and backspace, and make sure the whole key moves downward at the same rate regardless of where it’s pressed. They work, but they sound terrible, unless you find some way to stop the wire from rattling in the housing, the slider from slamming into the PCB, and the various plastic parts from rubbing together. It usually involves a combination of lubrications and greases. Tuning the stabilizers is the most time-consuming and tricky part of most keyboard builds.
He hired an electrical engineering firm to design the PCB, which he figured would be the hardest part, since Topre switch clones are pretty easy to come by. It took about a year. “And then I realized, ‘Shit, I guess I have to make all the other stuff that goes with it.’ It took about five years.
The project turned into a deliberate effort in making the best keyboard he possibly can, no matter how much it costs. My ambitions just kind of spiraled out of control, that’s what it was.
He thought he could do better. His first prototypes sounded great, but they were wobbly like Topre. His second design had tighter tolerances, which made it sound worse. He made more stuff to make a deeper sound. Each revision required another round of injection-molded tooling as he searched for the perfect combo of feel and sound.
The rubber dome on the topre switches is different from a physical switch. When pushing the key weakens the dome and a circuit under each key senses the change in capacitance and then register a key press. Releasing the switch snaps the dome back into place.
Towards a Better Handlubed Stabilizer for Keyboards: Analyzing Seneca’s Improved Barometer Mechanism
The original plan was to use hand-lubed stabilizers, that’s a standard thing. But I thought it just would be interesting to see if there was some way to solve this problem without requiring it all to be based on lubrication to dissipate the sound.”
Developing the Seneca’s stabilizers took several years, a bunch of false starts, and, in his words, a “personal cash bazooka.” His first attempt, mostly on his own, resulted in what he considered a “90 percent solution” — better than anything on the market, without lube. There is only 90 percent of it. He started over again.
He collaborated with a company that works with kinematics to develop a stabilizer mechanism. They came up with two new stabilizer mechanisms. The first is a compliant-beam design that’s significantly better than existing stabilizers as well as his first prototype. It’s much less prone to rattle or tick. It is as close to perfect as possible without altering how stabilizers work. The second design has more pin-joint hinges with more parts than a standard stabilizer. It’s hideously expensive to produce and both time consuming and fiddly to assemble, but it’s better.
Source: How to build the best keyboard in the world
The Norbauer & Co. SENECA System: An Aluminum-Based, Metal-Frame-Enabled, Low-Cost Keyboard
This is illustrative of Norbauer’s general approach, which is that solving technical problems is much more interesting than trying to minimize production costs. That was taken to a deliberate extreme. “Our goal is just to make this good, and that’s all that matters. Whenever there was a branch, I wanted it to be the right way to do it. The philosophy of this board has always been that.
The case is made from solid aluminum with an MAO finish, and it requires the creation of a company in China to source it. There are two different options, one which has a speckled stonelike look and the other which looks like concrete. The two are very comfortable to the touch. There is also a black version, which I have not seen in person, and a nearly $8,000 titanium option.
The switchplate is chrome- plated and milled from brass for its acoustic properties. It would be cheaper and easier to mills aluminum, but brass absorbs sound better. The galvanic isolation chip on the PCB is designed to protect the computer from a power failure that may cause a surge of electricity into the keyboard. The cable has an obscenely expensive Lemo connector on the keyboard side. Lemo connectors are more secure than USB and Norbauer thinks they’re cool, and cool is better, and it’s his keyboard.
Norbauer & Co wants to be a company that can make keyboards for everything from cameras to cars, or Hermés for handbags and scarves.
Each SENECA is built by hand in Norbauer’s garage in Los Angeles at a rate of only one or two per day, depending on Norbauer and Kim’s schedule.
The stabilizers alone take Taeha an hour or two per keyboard, including a step where he takes a tiny reamer to each set to make the pin holes large enough for the (precision-ground) pins to fit in, these tolerances being tighter than can be managed with injection molding alone.
“Sometimes, if it’s not reamed quite enough, you’ll get a little bit of sluggishness in the fit between those parts. And the friction across the whole system is cumulative. So if you have a little bit of sluggishness in a few places, you don’t know until you’ve put the whole thing together that the stabilizer itself is a little bit sluggish,” says Norbauer. They have to disassemble the keyboard, fix the stabilizer, and start over.
You don’t have to spend $3,600 to get an amazing keyboard. Obviously. Don’t spend a lot of money on a keyboard. You can have a great time with an off-the-shelf board that costs under $100. The barebones keyboard is cheaper than the Seneca, you can add any switches and stabilizers you want, and you have more control over the end result than you do with the Seneca. This is a strong endorsement for the Classic-TKL. You can get a Realforce keyboard for $250 and fall in love with the Topre switches that launched Norbauer on the path to the Seneca all those years ago.
The CEO of the Seneca keyboard company: How Norbauer sold his company and sold it to an investment firm, and he made a good profit
“I mean, definitely when I sell this first batch, and probably the second batch, and well into the third or fourth, I would not have recouped my R&D costs on it. And it’s an interesting question. I am bad at business.
He says that his business wasn’t particularly profitable for most of the time. My goal is to break even while doing cool R&D. I am not personally losing a lot of money. The Heavy Grail was a very popular offering. People really loved it and it sold way more than I ever thought it would. And that helped bootstrap and fund the Seneca, but 100 percent of what would have been profit went into that.”
He sold most of his company to an investment firm run by an old friend, even though he was starting to think about a lot of logistical tasks. The arrangement leaves Norbauer with a majority stake and total creative control — he’s still the CEO — and lets him focus on developing keyboards while other people take care of the “making money” part of it.
In this case, it’s the executive in residence of Norbauer & Co.’s. In a 12,000-word blog post announcing the sale, Norbauer writes, “He acts essentially as our COO, but his job description is basically doing all the things that I hate — a skillset at which he inexplicably but admirably excels.”
Source: How to build the best keyboard in the world
From a dating website to a topre keyboard obsession: A story of a geek in West Virginia, and how to code topre
He wanted more control over the other parts of the board as well as something that could be used by people who don’t like the Norbauer aesthetic but are still interested in having a keyboard.
Each opportunity gave him a chance to improve his manufacturing capability, as well as experiment with various materials and finishes.
Norbaforce was used for Realforce tenkeyless keyboards, while the Heavy-9 and Heavy-4 were used for the Leopold FC660C and FC980C. His most popular home in the year 2020 was the Heavy Grail.
Topre keyboards are rare compared to mechanical keyboards using Cherry MX-style switches. Only a few companies ever made them, so there aren’t many layout options, and they tend to be more expensive, with fewer features for the money. They’re also harder to customize, with only a few different dome options; they also aren’t compatible with most aftermarket keycaps out of the box. And while metal cases are common in enthusiast mechanical keyboards, Topre keyboards only come in plastic. But Topre boards have a dedicated fan base because the domes give Topre switches a snappy tactility you can’t otherwise replicate.
The dating website led to two more startups. After selling all three startup he was given the money and time to learn how to make Star Trek prop replicas. It also led him to Topre keyboards.
He spent six months coding for 14 hours a day; this got him a website, a startup, and tendonitis. Fixing the tendonitis involved adopting proper typing form (wrists straight, hands hovering over the keyboard like a pianist’s). Searching for a more comfortable keyboard eventually sent him down the path of an obsession.
Norbauer loves to know how to build things from scratch if they don’t exist. About 20 years ago, he got an idea for a dating website. “I didn’t have any money at all. I dropped out of a PhD program, so I had an idea for a company I wanted to start. I could not hire anyone to code it for me. I guess I just have to learn how to code.
Norbauer grew up in West Virginia in the 1990s, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and absorbing both its retro-modern aesthetic and its vision of an egalitarian, post-scarcity world. The dawn of the internet was also at that time. The computer represented an escape from the world as it is, a window into the future of Star Trek, of Epcot, of the idea that a more connected world would be a better one.
How Much Should I Pay for a Seneca? The Easyest Way to Get the Most Out of Your Keys and Why You Need It?
I’ve spent the last couple of months typing on an early Seneca, and the answer to the last question is the easiest. Yes. It’s incredible. It’s certainly the nicest keyboard you can buy. The build quality is astonishing, the Topre-style switches are better than Topre’s, the stabilizers are better than anyone’s, and the keyboard is beautiful and a joy to type on. The Seneca is a genuine technical accomplishment.
The term “endgame,” among keyboard enthusiasts, is sort of a running gag. Endgame is when you finally dial in your perfect layout, case, features, switches, and keycaps, so you can stop noodling around with parts and get on with whatever it is you actually use the keyboard for — work, presumably. Then a few months later you see something shiny and start over.
But what if you didn’t have to compromise? What if you had the time, patience, and cash to create a keyboard from scratch? I mean everything from start to finish, from the cable to the switches and stabilizers.
You have narrowed your audience to two small and overlap groups if you are selling a keyboard for $3,600. You have to be able to convince the pickiest keyboard nerds on Earth that there’s something about your keyboard they can’t get anywhere else. The keyboard nerds need to know that you have convinced them that it is worth half a grand.
They have been, as a rule, moderately impressed. Everyone likes the way it sounds and looks, but they aren’t blown away. It has not ruined them for their keys. Most of them ask where the pad is.
Norbauer Seneca Review: A $3,600 luxury capactive keyboard for the keyboard obsessed (via the verge.com/reviews/659125/norbauer_seneca)
The Seneca has a totally flat typing angle. The back of most mechanical keyboards has a typing angle between 3 and 11 degrees. Ergonomically, flat (or even negative) is better. If you prefer, you can get a three-degree typing angle with the optional riser. On a whim, I put it backward, giving the keyboard a negative three-degree angle, and now all my other keyboards feel weird. This might be the Seneca’s biggest impact on my life going forward.
There are a few quirks that aren’t normal. The Seneca’s custom cable uses USB-C on the computer end and a Lemo connector at the near end. It looks very cool, and it keeps the aesthetic coherent, but if the Seneca is joining a rotation of other keyboards on your desk, it means you have to swap cables every time. If you purchase a 7 pound keyboard, do you really want to get rid of it at your desk? On the other, if you care enough about keyboards to buy this one, you probably do have a lot of nice keyboards you want to rotate between. The short Lemo-to-USB-C dongle was supposed to be ready during the review period.
The Edition Zero Senecas include closed-source firmware that doesn’t allow for hardware-based key remapping, which is the biggest omission. Norbauer decided not to include remappability for the sake of simplicity when he commissioned the Firmware half a decade ago. He thinks software re mapping is good enough to use on a keyboard that isn’t meant to be carried from computer to computer.
Edition Zero was the first production run and includes 50 that were sold in a private sale last summer to a small group of previous Norbauer clients.
Source: Norbauer Seneca review: a $3,600 luxury keyboard for the keyboard obsessed
The Norbauer Seneca is a permanent, heavy, and unbelievably pleasant keyboard for the keyboard obsessed (review: a $3,600 luxury capactive keyboard)
It is staggeringly heavy, ungodly expensive, and unbelievably pleasant to type on, in a way that maybe only diehard keyboard enthusiasts will fully appreciate.
For a lack of a better word, the Seneca is permanent. It weighs more than seven pounds and looks like a worn stone. The case is milled aluminum, with a plasma-ceramic oxidized finish that has a warm gray textured look but feels totally smooth. You can’t Curl your fingers under it, it’s hard to pick up. Put it on your desk and stay there.
The typing experience is sublime. The keys have a big tactile bump right at the top, a smooth downstroke, and a snappy upstroke. The ones on my review unit are medium weight, which makes them feel like 45g Topre while there are lighter and heavier options.
Source: Norbauer Seneca review: a $3,600 luxury keyboard for the keyboard obsessed
The Seneca’s Electric Keypad Is Almost Like Raindrops: A Test Driven by Droplets in a Silence-X Sliding Mechanism
The switches are muted, not silenced; silicone rings on the slider soften the upstroke, and there’s a damper between the switch and PCB that quiets the downstroke and prevents coil crunch. I tried an old Silence-X ring and it worked ok, but the switches are compatible with third-party silencing rings.
The keyboard’s info page says, “The gentle sound of the Seneca is often likened to raindrops. It has a soft intentionally vintage-sounding thock without being obtrusively clacky.” Whatever voice you want to use, read that in. The typing test embedded below sounded like it was made up of droplets, according to Jake Kastrenakes, who did not read the info page.