The many faces of Granite

Posted on 2016, May 12 in Knowledgebase

Granite Round 4 has finally started shipping to its final destinations, I’ve already seen some nice pictures and I’m glad people are enjoying it.

During the last few years we had quite some iterations of this set and I never took the time to catalog all the keycaps that have been produced. So, it took me some digging into the many backups but I can ultimately show you all the Granite keys that left the Signature Plastics factory lane (excluding blanks) with a good 99% approximation.

Beware! Lots of pictures inside.

Original Granite

This is the original. The one and only. It included many languages that were removed in later group buys. It also featured the Cyrillic kit that was never replicated. The Nerdom kit included some very nice novelties (such as the kitty-key made for my wife) that are very specific of this first batch. Windowed keys also were never replicated.

Granite Round 2

This was run by MassDrop and it was basically a stripped down version of the original Granite. We added a 6u spacebar (but it was ABS not PBT) and removed the Nerdom kit. Some novelties were added to the Gamer kit. Notable addition was the Windows kit with logos from old and new version of the most loved and hated OS there is.

Granite Bonus Pack

While Round 2 was still rolling on MassDrop we ran a separate group buy on PimpMyKeyboard. It was composed by just 4 kits and they were designed to add back what was removed from MassDrop and also included some original novelty key. It hasn’t been easy to find all the keys of this one, but I believe I did it! The robot-face key was a bonus/surprise key.

Granite Round 3

Round 3 was essentially the same as Round 2 with just a few corrections to the Mono legends and the Homing kits.

Granite Round 4

And finally Round 4. All kits in the last run of Granite can be found here. Probably the most notable addition was the Elven Tongue kit and possibly the Secondary Legends. The bonus pack included some WhiteFox novelties, since the two drops were held more or less at the same time.

The future

I don’t think we will have more Granite… And this time it is for real. I may still release the design to the public domain and let anyone use it. I’m not sure yet. We’ll see.

Comments

Posted by Johan on 2016, May 12 @ 19:07

If you’re not going to do another round you should let PMK have the design and stock and sell it or something.
1. Posted by matt3o on 2016, May 13 @ 07:17
  
  yeah that might be an option, but Signature Plastics is insanely overbooked these days so…
Posted by iksemyonov on 2016, May 15 @ 10:54

So does that mean it’s not possible to buy a Granite any more? That’s sad since I was looking for quality Cyrillic keycaps, since I live in Russia and can’t use the retarded (sorry, they are) white-transparent-and-backlit or simply white-on-black legends that most mechanical boards appear to be using these days. Looking for black and red on beige Latin and Cyrillic, or at least black on beige with Latin symbols, classics caps, preferrably in PBT for a mechanical board. What are my options Matteo?
Posted by iksemyonov on 2016, May 15 @ 18:56

Forgot to mention that I’m planning to build a custom board with those caps, if I ever get them :)
Posted by Wodan on 2016, May 23 @ 07:18

Thanks so much for putting this together matt3o!

These keycaps deserve to be run annually, they are the de-facto standard for universal DSA sets.

Maybe add a “POS” kit in the next round?

“2487 users have requested this product.”
Posted by Anonymous on 2016, June 2 @ 09:08

Please let other people use your design. I really like the idea of GMK Granite, hell even SA Granite
Posted by Mr_NoRobot on 2016, June 19 @ 17:47

Hope you will do a 5th round at some point. This and Calm Depths are by far my favourite keysets. Anyway, thank you for your awesome work!
Posted by Henry on 2016, August 23 @ 20:51

I know you’re tired of Granite, so perhaps I should redirect this to Signature Plastics, but I thought I’d go straight to the source first.

It may have previously been mentioned, but all of the International sets seem to have skipped one, US-International:
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International
It may not be as used as other international sets, but perhaps it should be used more.
I know I’ve been looking for a set ever since I first got my first ErgoDox. Now I’d want two.
1. Posted by matt3o on 2016, August 24 @ 22:40
  
  that would make it a nice extra kit :)
  1. Posted by Henry on 2016, September 26 @ 07:18
    
    :-)
    That and I’d love to see an ErgoDoxian *Icons* set. I’ve got icons everywhere … except 6 keys, my 1.5u Shifts, 1.5u FNs, and my 2u Del and blue Enter. :-/ I didn’t notice those in any other sets. Though I suppose if they were, I wouldn’t need an ErgoDox kit.
Posted by macmakkara on 2016, September 6 @ 20:06

You are missing text multimedia set or i didin’t see those caps anywhere. But i have them. They just read prev, play, mute, vol -,vol +, next.
1. Posted by matt3o on 2016, September 7 @ 07:50
  
  In what kit of what round was that? Do you remember?
  1. Posted by macmakkara on 2016, September 8 @ 08:08
    
    I think Round 3 multimedia. Thats where i got it.
Posted by Anonymous on 2019, February 27 @ 00:25

How about adding the line for programmer dvorak?
1. Posted by matt3o on 2019, February 27 @ 16:37
  
  Granite is a flat profile, you can mix and match the keys anyway you want
Posted by Megatron on 2020, August 12 @ 16:45

Was this ever released to the public domain?

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