Anon's Keychron V6 Max mod

This mod only applies to de-foamed or mostly-de-foamed boards. Foam is a tool for making boards sound less like themselves: boards which have been stuffed full of foam tend to all sound pretty similar, and this is why you'll often hear "sounds like foam" when keyboard hobbyists describe such boards. For better or for worse, when you take the foam away you hear more of the shape of the board, the hollow cavity under the PCB, the thickness and density of the case material, etc.

The V6 max is a big board, so stuffing it full of foam just hides how good it would normally sound. I encourage anyone who buys this keyboard to experiment with adding and removing all the different pieces of foam to see how you like it in different configurations.

If you do decide to remove all or most of the foam, then here is my V6 Max mod:

Credit where credit's due:
I got the idea to try this from a TaehaTypes video where he was looking at a budget keyboard and remarked "it doesn't need those side gaskets".

Theory
A PCB will be stiffest near its mounting points. Switches near these points will sound higher-pitched. This is why we often like to try eliminating mounting points as far as possible without making the PCB feel too wobbly; and we especially try to keep them away from some keys like the spacebar or the left side mods.

There is another problem with mounting points which is that by constraining and stiffening the PCB they limit the ways it can flex. That can be a good thing, but it's generally considered desirable for the PCB to be able to flex along the shorter dimension (front to rear), without being impeded by mounting points on the left and right sides.

It is for both of the aforementioned reasons very rare to see mounting points on the left or right side on any high-end board these days. The V6 Max has gaskets on these sides, so the objective of this mod is to remove them and to address any problems created by doing so.

Method
First, before doing anything, spend some time using the left-side mods: caps lock, tab, shift. Try out the numpad + and enter as well. Get used to what they sound like. Otherwise you won't be able to tell whether anything improved.

Now open your board and take out the 4 gasket pieces above and below the pcb on the left and right sides. Reassemble the board and try those keys again—you should find that they sound instantly deeper, a straightforward improvement. But you will also notice that now your escape key sags because the plate/pcb isn't being supported adequately in the upper-left corner. At this point you can decide whether these improvements matter enough to you to continue: if not, it's easy to put those gasket strips back in and quit here.

If you want to continue, the next and final step is to take a piece of foam of some kind and stick it on top of the daughter board to support the plate. To figure out where to do that you can just take a good look at that corner as the pcb/plate/switch assembly sits in place, and you'll notice the plate looks like it was designed to be supported there.

It doesn't take much to support the plate there, and it shouldn't be hard to come up with something. I used a piece of packing foam that came in the V6 Max's box, cutting it to size and attaching it with hockey tape. You could steal one of the sticky foam pads from the underside of the pcb meant to protect it from bottoming out, although removing those could be problematic, I don't know. I removed them in my keyboard and haven't had problems, but I also added stiffer gaskets, so my PCB might just be less at risk of bottoming out against the battery/etc.

I think this mod makes a big improvement in this keyboard and more people ought to try it.

Edit

Pub: 13 Sep 2025 03:58 UTC

Edit: 13 Sep 2025 04:00 UTC

Views: 51