Among keyboard enthusiasts, the term “endgame” refers to finding the perfect keyboard setup to stop tinkering and start using it fully. Yet, that ideal often remains elusive due to compromises in cost, time, or availability.
Ryan Norbauer, founder of Norbauer & Co., has defied these constraints with the Seneca keyboard: a $3,600, seven-pound masterpiece crafted from plasma-oxide-finished milled aluminum, featuring a solid brass switch plate, custom capacitive switches, and the company’s own stabilizers. The keyboard offers a flat typing angle, spherical-profile keycaps with retro-centered legends, and no backlighting.
After months of testing the Seneca, users praise its exceptional build quality and superior typing experience, citing Topre-style switches that outperform originals and industry-leading stabilizers.
Norbauer’s journey began with a passion for computing sparked in his 1990s West Virginia childhood, inspired by Star Trek and early internet culture. He transitioned from starting startups and learning to code under challenging conditions, to exploring industrial design and keyboard customization.
He initially focused on creating aluminum housings for Topre keyboards, like the Norbatouch, Norbaforce, and Heavy Grail models, designed to replace the less desirable plastic cases of original keyboards. Despite success, relying on OEM keyboard supply limited control and customization.
Determined to build a fully custom keyboard, Norbauer designed the Seneca with a unique capacitive switch mechanism that maintains Topre’s tactile feel but eliminates wobble and adds compatibility with MX-style keycaps. This required redesigning switch housings and stems and undergoing multiple rounds of prototyping to optimize sound and feel.
He also reinvented keyboard stabilizers—the mechanisms ensuring balanced keypress feel on larger keys—by collaborating with kinematics experts to develop two innovative stabilizer designs. The Seneca employs a complex, high-precision model that drastically reduces noise and improves responsiveness without lubrication.
The keyboard’s case is machined from solid aluminum with a specialized finish, and the brass switchplate enhances acoustic qualities. Its PCB features galvanic isolation for electrical safety, and it uses premium Lemo connectors for durability and style. The keycaps, chosen for comfort and aesthetics, come from MTNU’s spherical-profile line.
Each Seneca is hand-assembled in Norbauer’s Los Angeles workshop, with painstaking stabilizer assembly requiring precision adjustments. Despite its high price and substantial development costs—still unrecovered weeks after launch—the keyboard targets a niche audience who value craftsmanship over cost.
Norbauer aims for limited production runs akin to Leica in photography: creating technically fascinating, exclusive products for a small but dedicated clientele. Having secured investment to handle business operations, he remains focused on engineering and design.
Future plans include leveraging the custom switches and stabilizers for new keyboard models with varying layouts, materials, and sound profiles. Open-source firmware and further R&D on stabilizer designs are also underway.
While the Seneca is an elite luxury item unlikely to appeal to most users, it represents a remarkable achievement in keyboard engineering and artisanal manufacture.