Incoming "Glorious" repair.

Just when you thought the keyboard blogs were done. In comes a different keyboard to my bench known as the "Glorious GMMK3" keyboard which is supposed to be one of those DIY level keyboards for people to get into the joy purchasing your own switches, your own keycaps, cramming housing insulation into the shell of your keyboard just so that you too can have that special "YouTuber grade THOCK" as you type. Or, perhaps you would rather go with linear switches with o-rings because you actually like to keep your job.

Looking up the cost of these complete kits, they generally go for $130+ (USD), which is double what we paid for our Red Dragon K556 when it was brand new on the market. A little boutique to appease the gamers with money. However, it is still basic enough to be picked up in most chain outlets. This particular keyboard landed on my bench for $10, whole dollars on Craigslist, with the supposed mother explaining how her "Gamer Kid" was working on this and broke it.

Fair ball. When we picked up the box, we could already hear the little rattle of screws rolling about inside. So! Let's crack this bad boy open and see what hell awaits us!

Incoming... Wait... Empty boxing video.

When we see elaborate packaging like this. We think to ourselves how much money could've been saved if you just shipped it in a regular cardboard box, because unless you're some kind of tech hoarder or you intend to sell your custom DIY build on eBay you these types of things are generally thrown into the same paper recycling bin at the end of the day.

Anyhow, the reason why you are getting an empty box unboxing is for some reason, we must have forgotten to take a picture of the disassembled keyboard with all of the screws, gaskets placers bouncing around inside the box, under the flaps, inside of the keyboard itself. It truly was a hot mess.

Now, we do have to give credit where it is due. If you're going to have a DIY-like product, you'd better have a flipping breakdown of the product! Now pay attention to how this keyboard is laid out, as it will be nothing like this. Also note that the company claims that this keyboard was designed in the USA and manufactured in China. Fantastic, we know exactly who to blame for what we are about to get into.

I guess in true tradition, Glorious encourages to use their keycaps and "Glorious Fox" linear switches over anyone else because supposedly "They are the best?" Lubrication of key mechanics can also hide all of the flaws within their manufacturing process. Take some of the cheapest key-caps on Aliexpress and then lubricate the friction points with GPL-105, and you'll get the same feeling as what we're getting out of the Glorious Fox set.

Now, if you think we're just throwing speculation out there, consider this:  

 

A while back, we made a cheap ArduinoDECK to control steam using a bunch of these bootleg brown switches, coming in at about $4.70 for a pack of 30. There's typically a small notch in the front of the stem of the keycap that is indented a little because our best guess is that's where the stem of the plastic injection needed to be broken off. We did check out our cherry reds on the Corsair M70 and the kaith greens on our Razer keyboard. Same thing. Despite being bootlegs, they seem to be at least keeping with the industry standard with everyone else. Cool.

The Glorious Red Fox mechanical keys have MULTIPLE notches taken out of them. And it seems to be a little too uniform for it to be user abuse. Maybe us replacing " 2 " " T " " ' " and " Y " keys because the caps would wiggle and misfire as we were typing this blog has just gotten us a little paranoid about the overall quality of these things. Also, pressing and holding down these keys would cause very sporadic key-presses in Notepad. 

The clear plastics don't seem as clear as the bootlegs, too. Hmmmmm.

Damage report.

Anyhow, since the keyboard is mostly taken apart, we guess we could plug it in and do a keyboard test, only to find out the " Z " key is totally not working. since the "Sound-Dampening Foam" was missing. We attempted to remove the mechanics with our trusty keycap puller, only to find a piece of from the back of the motherboard hitting our desk.

 

That's a lotta damage!

Not even the kind of damage Flexseal can help you with, either! The surface-mount Kailth pads were totally ripped off the PCB. Apparently, whoever this kid is. Has some serious Kung Fu finger of death strength, where he attempted to push the mechanism in so hard that the glue holding the traces down couldn't handle it. Looking around the internet, this is not some isolated incident from Glorious. Although you can cite part of the fault on the end-user for being impatient with loading 104 key mechanisms onto a board. We also blame the US engineers at Glorious for this as well. Because a Mill-Max style hot-swap system, like what RedDragon had, which is based around through-hole technology, would be considerably more durable than relying on the glues of a surface mount PCB. 

We can't speak for all service technicians out there. But we would personally prefer to work on a fucked up Mill-Max through-hole mechanism than a surface-mounted component. At least with the through hole, you could drill it out (we've pulled out Mill-Max adapters before, just heating up the solder and poking it from the other side got it right out.)

As for that plastic burn mark on the orange switch above. You're going to have to take our word that it was not us that did that.

Now, the matrix of a mechanical keyboard is fairly simple. Usually, the columns are all wired together in series. And the rows go off to those "VD" diodes to prevent ghosting or pressing the wrong key being registered back at the microcontrollers. 

We took out our multimeter and checked the continuity of that hanging trace underneath the orange SMD socket and the right side, where the metal is. 0 Ohms. great. That's our series. The other side is going to be a little trickier as there's not a whole hell of a lot of real estate by that black VD diode. But because it was peeled away, it shows clearly where the other side goes.

It should be important to note that we're a little lucky it was the " Z " key, as that would be the end of the keyboard's matrix for that region. If it were the " 1 " key, for example. Then " Q ", " A ", and " Z " would also fail to work as well as they break the series chain. That would result in us patching the wire both above and below.

Well, you can't solder it back. There's no fucking pads! You'd just burn the PCB if you tried. So, we take some notes for retro-gaming where finger-boards get burned out from power supply ground-out in both pinball machines as well as JAMMA stand-up arcades. We have to MAKE a PAD.

 

We had a spool of tin from when we were having "fun" making lithium battery packs for dumb projects. The width is exactly what we want; We just need to cut up some squares to use.

 

Some notes to take away from this technique. It does need a form of epoxy resin to glue the pads down. Apply the resin, tower dab away most of it so it's just a thin surface. Then, with tweezers. Place the pads in place. Try to get them lined up as close as possible. As for the type of resin I used, Gorilla Glue, which is a bad idea because that means you have to solder at low temperature, or else the glue would vaporize. Try to find some high-temperature resin that you could use.

We let the glue sit overnight so it could cure as best as possible for the next step, which is wiring and soldering onto those pads.

You could say this is not a "Glorious" repair. But it's certainly a functional repair!

The red trace wire worked without issue as we had plenty of real estate to bead the solder and make sure it stayed on there super secure. We had to increase the gauge of the black wire so we could pre-bead the wire with solder, as we would be coming at the diode from an angle. Excuses, excuses, we should've probably gotten a smaller tip for our PINECIL before during this job but went with the stock tip instead. The trick of getting this all together is that you have to do the wiring first, sandwich the Kailh SMD pad with the mechanical switch second. and with a finger pressing on one side, solder the other until it bottoms out with the tin. 

With a quick plugin to see if it works. (" Z " Key is back, hurray!) We threw down some more glue around the pads, as well as the back of the Kailh SMD plastics, to add strength in the future. 

In fact, we dabbed ALL the Kailh switches where the plastic meets the PCB with a drop of Gorilla Glue. Just so they can stand a chance in hell when swapping mechanical keys. Now, when replacing the other 4 keys. It only took key puller strength to extract. Putting them back in required just 1-2 fingers and light wiggling. That's it!

Update: 12/05/2025 - we later found out this plastic Kailh surface mounts apparently also have a Hall Effect function in them as well, which is probably why the pricetag of this keyboard is double that of the RedDragon, allowing you to alternate between dropping in both the physical pin switches or the hall effect variant. We probably should've lengthened our black a little more so it's not so close. But it still does not answer they they went surface mount when, as engineers, you probably could've asked for a more durable through-hole design.

Addressing the case.

The PCB isn't the only thing we had to fix. There was something really fucked up going on with the foam inside of this keyboard. Like the kid decided to remove and double-stack the foam right in the middle. Really fucking weird. But also destructive because we can't separate any of it!

We're ejecting it all!

We're even ejecting the steel plate that gives gamers a false sense of quality by saying:

"It has weight!" 

Look, we get why plastic. It does allow for keyboards to be wireless, allowing for Bluetooth and 2.4ghz connections in the future. Encasing the keyboard in an aluminum frame, like what RedDragon did, really fucks up one's ability to promote wireless connectivity. And to be honest, we even like the daughterboard on this. If the USB-C connector gets jacked up, there's the possibility of repairing that too.

So to replace everything removed, we need to go to a Craft Store. Unfortunately, in the United States, Jo-Anns/Hancock Fabrics is gone. Leaving us with the bastards at Michelle's. We will need two things.

• Fibre-Fill - loose foam to reduce higher frequencies. This stuff is especially easy to get during Christmas, and we're not concerned about any fire hazards using this as your keyboard is typically 5VDC@100ma, which is far safer than the trainsets and Christmas lights this stuff is generally decorated around. If possible, your grandma might be able to hook you u,p too. You don't need much, just a handful of the stuff. (I would ask my grandma, but she would make me work at her plant running the Durst printing several thousand political signs on e-flute, which we have better things to do with our lives)
• 2mm thick foam pads - contain the fibre fill and reduce the mids/lows.

Of course, we cannot say this technique is considered any level of 'soundproofing'. We're not sound engineers. But if anything, it should keep the keyboard 'floaty' just like what those blue gaskets are doing.

 

The amount of Fibre Fill is really small, as we had to fit-test this multiple times. But once we get most of it tucked into the cavity of the keyboard, we can move on to the next step, which is the foam sheets.

These foam sheets that are designed for kids' projects are super cheap, and you only need 2 of the 3 sheets in a pack like this. You can roughly measure the cavity of the case and, with a pair of scissors, cut it all up to size and place it on top of the fibre-fill to make it nice and neat when you put your keyboard together.

Serial number blurred to protect the guilty.

Buttoning this keyboard up, we were left with the final challenge, which is that the kid lost half of the hardware. Well, we have at least four keyboard feet, so we'll place those at the bottom. As for the missing screws, the thread length and diameter are similar to some of the oddball computers we've taken apart in the past. So after a while of digging around the 'Screw-Coffin," we found some suitable screws to put back in and secure the keyboard.

For a company that prides itself on letting people build and customize their keyboard. This, to us, is the biggest slap in the face, as you can't get the rubber feet that obviously you could easily lose, as well as the hardware, such as any/all of the screws. Their website behaves as the electronic version of "Build-A-Bear" where they let you choose a limited amount of things you can replace, and anything that came stock with your base model turns into a 'tough shit, buy another' policy, which is about as anti-repair as you can get.

For those wondering. We tried to search for the following:

• screws
• screw
• hardware
• plastic
• mount
• mounts
• fastener
• fasteners
• Gasket (which came up with the GMMK Pro, but not the blue neoprene gaskets that came with the GMMK3)
• Keycap Puller (Returned a result for a wire puller that is one-sided, meaning you'll do more damage to your board!)

Perhaps we're not a "Glorious" customer. Function over form. Right to repair. And most importantly, not be a group of wasteful bitches that offer a crap 1-year warranty plan. BUT! That's just us!

To O-Ring or not?

We did try to O-ring the entire Glorious keyboard because we figured this would probably make a good work keyboard. Neither CLACK nor THOCC. The keyboard would just be silent, especially with the red linears. But upon initial testing, we were getting a crazy amount of misfires throughout the entire array. To which, we are finding out it's not really the ring's fault as much as it is the switches themselves, in that the silicone rings were pushing the tips away from the base, resulting in the keys not pressing all the way down.

However, keep the O-rings on anything double-wide or higher, such as the shift keys, enter, space bar, and backspace. Because those keys are heavy enough to also have stabilizers preventing the keys from popping out. It really helped with the space bar because, WOW, was it throwing a high-pitched sound as the key bottomed out. Thus, the O-Rings were a much-needed improvement to get silence out of your Glorious. Perhaps with better linears with a shorter travel, it would be perfect.

The software.

Glorious does, of course, come with its own software called "Glorious Core," which is giving me some wicked Corsair Flashbacks. 

Some reviewers say that the Glorious keyboard is the only keyboard you need for your entire lifetime. But whose lifetime? The lifetime of the company and its limited software running on a limited operating system for a limited time? Outside of perhaps updating the firmware and adjusting the input latency, it's hardly worth installing. In most companies running a Windows environment, they would just outright ban the use of this software anyway, deeming it non-work-related. Thankfully, you can still control your lighting system with the function keys. 

We will say that the Glorious Core manager is only taking 18MB of RAM. This is far better than what Corsair could do. 

Not only does the Glorious Core install itself as an X86 app, which in itself is a little dated. But the filesize for such a simple program is completely absurd. This is due to the nature of modern development, where devs use a Chrome wrapper instead of spending the time to build a frontend from scratch. Then, unironically, put ffmpeg.dll in there (our guess is to introduce commercials into the app in the future)

We have Steam games that use less space than an app that plays with macros and adjusts the polling rate. Fucking shame, Glorious. Using open source software for your own commercial benefits, considering how much you charge for your keyboards, you can afford better devs.

Final thoughts.

After fixing this keyboard and using it to write this very blog. We don't think we'd ever be the kind of animal who would go out of their way to buy one of these. If we did. We would probably be suffering from some serious buyer's remorse spending upwards of ($150USD) for such a device. Like office chairs, talking about keyboards is a lot like talking about politics. Everyone has their own background and opinion of what they feel is the ultimate keyboard. To me, for example, we always opt for the 104-key system, because number pads to operate Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel give me a serious case of the chubbies (Thinking of you, Justin, in accounting!) We've tried 60-75-85 percent keyboards, and my brain just misfires using them.

As for the comfort and usability of the keyboard, adjusting from browns to red linears fucks with our heads a little for the first hour. But we're now typing at a steady pace on this thing with minimal error correction. We might look for shorter linear travel key mechanisms so we can put the O-rings completely on this unit. But for now, we'll be sending the Glorious GMMK3 to work where it can endure the terrors of e-mail and programming. We even tried the volume knob, which, if you are rocking headphones at work, can be important to adjust your conference calls on the fly. 

As for durability, you can replace just about everything for relatively cheaply via AliExpress. You don't even need to visit Glorious for most of the upgrades. Hell, you technically don't even need their software once you've adjusted their polling rate, you can simply uninstall and live for 10+ years when the plastic housing between to corrodes and cracks. Overall, it just feels needlessly pricey.

For the home, we'll return to the RedDragon K556. It's a little more clacky with the aluminum body. But it's easier to service to clean, and as the frame is flat and not like the Glorious, which, for reasons beyond explanation, you can't get their keypuller in without removing the top base. But we CAN get our RedDragon keycap puller and extractor to easily remove both the mechanism and the keycaps without unscrewing the case of the Glorious.

Anyhow, we hope you found this article useful and if you're still reading. Holy shit.. Thank you!

That's what server said.

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