If you want to dip a whole foot you could buy a hot swappable PCB and case to experiment with switches and keycaps. It's probably not cheaper than a Keychron, but it could be give you more options to explore. I've built two Nyquist's from keebio and a handwired Alice: each has cost less than $100. My first Nyquist is still the cheapest of the three and my daily driver; it replaced a Gigabyte with Cherry reds...