Recommended replacement keyboard switches?

[Vittra]

11 pages

• Keycap lighting is an aesthetic preference primarily. A desk lamp can perform the same function - it can even be behind your monitor to provide bias lighting and improved preceived black depth contrast. There's also monitor screenbars, and while I personally do not like them, I understand why many can prefer them.

• Even without see through keycaps, keycap lighting will still shine around each keycap as "light bleed". The strength of the leds/illumination will determine how much bleeds out, along with if it's in contact with materials that will easily reflect light - something like a white keyswitch plate vs black for example, or if the plate material diffuses led lighting, etc.
  
  
• PBT withstands "shine" that finger oils will cause overtime, when compared to ABS. It still occurs, but is significantly mitigated. You may never notice it unless you look at it under a certain light. If your keycaps have a texture to them, PBT will retain it for longer. PBT is typically also described as "dryer" feeling overall. As ABS shines or wears, it will feel more slick, regardless of if it previously had texture or not. Beyond this, PBT vs ABS have different sound profiles.
  
  
• Doubleshot keycaps combine two different molds. Tripleshot would be three molds, and so forth. This method allows legends to be incredibly crisp when done correctly, and the legend is an actual mold of plastic - it can never wear through - it's present through the entirety of the cap.
  
  
• Dye sublimation is that - it dyes through the keycap, and reaches quite deep, but not completely through. For practical purposes it will not wear out either, so no concern of that. It can usually look a bit more fuzzy though. Reverse dye-sublimation must be used when the keycap is to be a darker colour than the legend itself. The legend is the base plastic colour, and the rest of the cap is being dyed. This is NOT a refined process, and leads to inconsistent results - keycaps will generally shrink from the process and be inconsistent in sizing and fitment. Most if not all of these come from groupbuys, where there is no consideration for quality, so the bad caps aren't discarded - they are passed over to you. This is the reason why ABS Doubleshot is still primarily used when the legend colour is to be ligher than the keycap, and why reverse dyesub should be avoided.

 

[Lysrin]

Interesting info!

Having had backlit keyboards and lots of different lighting options for many years, the only thing I would disagree with (and that's a strong word) is that lighting is an "aesthetic preference primarily". For me, I like the aesthetics yes, but the functionality of a well done shine through keycap backlit keyboard can't be beat for how I like the lighting set up done in my office/play space.

Also with the use of a large screen, and HDR in gaming, the brightness difference looking at a very bright scene in game and then down at the keyboard quickly in a fairly dark room, waiting for your pupils to dilate so you can see the not-often used key, is mitigated by that nice little backlit legend shining back at you

 

[sswilson]

11 pages

• Keycap lighting is an aesthetic preference primarily. A desk lamp can perform the same function - it can even be behind your monitor to provide bias lighting and improved preceived black depth contrast. There's also monitor screenbars, and while I personally do not like them, I understand why many can prefer them.
• Even without see through keycaps, keycap lighting will still shine around each keycap as "light bleed". The strength of the leds/illumination will determine how much bleeds out, along with if it's in contact with materials that will easily reflect light - something like a white keyswitch plate vs black for example, or if the plate material diffuses led lighting, etc.
  
  
• PBT withstands "shine" that finger oils will cause overtime, when compared to ABS. It still occurs, but is significantly mitigated. You may never notice it unless you look at it under a certain light. If your keycaps have a texture to them, PBT will retain it for longer. PBT is typically also described as "dryer" feeling overall. As ABS shines or wears, it will feel more slick, regardless of if it previously had texture or not. Beyond this, PBT vs ABS have different sound profiles.
  
  
• Doubleshot keycaps combine two different molds. Tripleshot would be three molds, and so forth. This method allows legends to be incredibly crisp when done correctly, and the legend is an actual mold of plastic - it can never wear through - it's present through the entirety of the cap.
  
  
• Dye sublimation is that - it dyes through the keycap, and reaches quite deep, but not completely through. For practical purposes it will not wear out either, so no concern of that. It can usually look a bit more fuzzy though. Reverse dye-sublimation must be used when the keycap is to be a darker colour than the legend itself. The legend is the base plastic colour, and the rest of the cap is being dyed. This is NOT a refined process, and leads to inconsistent results - keycaps will generally shrink from the process and be inconsistent in sizing and fitment. Most if not all of these come from groupbuys, where there is no consideration for quality, so the bad caps aren't discarded - they are passed over to you. This is the reason why ABS Doubleshot is still primarily used when the legend colour is to be ligher than the keycap, and why reverse dyesub should be avoided.

Any particular recommendations for mid range keycap manufacturers? I'm waiting on some Ghost Judges which seem to be reasonably well reviewed, and the images of them make them look pretty chunky.

 

[sswilson]

Sooooo.......

General observation on GMK keycaps.

I kept my eyes open for a decent sale on a set of GMK keycaps and ended up with a set of GMK 8008 2 from Omnitype @ $49 USD (total cost $103 CDN delivered to my door).

GMK 8008 2 (CYL)

The original 8008® keycap set that was inspired by a sports bra! Designed by Garrett (G Bur), the founder of Omnitype®, this desaturated/muted blue set with pink and/or blue accents has become one of the most popular sets of all time. With a new BL00 variant, 8008® is sure to make eyes pop!

omnitype.com

The keycaps look great. The pink legends are super sharp and vibrant, and while I grabbed the standard set there's still a few options WRT swapping out black w/ grey edge keys as well as the ability to swap out the pink escape and enter keys.

They don't feel any heavier than my ghost Judges and/or KBDiy clones, but they are well packaged and seem like a quality manufacture job.

OTOH, I'm not sure I like the sound profile of double shot ABS process when compared to the sound profile of my other cherry profile sets which are PBT. I find the PBT sound to be deeper, and what I'd consider marbley (not sure I'm describing the same sound as what's bandied about by the KB community). I also found the ABS MSA profile (Mint Brand) keycaps I swapped out for the GMKs to be a lot deeper than the GMKs, but that's a different keycap profile which apparently can affect sound profile.

Overall, nice looking (and feeling) keycaps, but I think I prefer the sound of relatively decent quality PBT keycaps so going forward I won't continue feeling like I'm missing out on something by not being willing to drop well north of $200 on a keycap set, not the mention having to participate in the group buy lottery to get my foot in the door.

edit: Swapped them with cherry PBT and the sound profile didn't change that much so the difference I'm experiencing would seem to be the different (MSA) keycap profile as opposed to the composition of the keycaps. I'm not also thinking that it's the FR4 plate I've got on this particular keyboard that's having a drastic difference on the sound.

On another note.... I find the Mars Green colour scheme (yellow legends on black and green) to be a much higher contrast and easier to view in lower light so I'm going to swap these with my AL66 so that the higher contrast ones will be where I need them most.

 

[Lysrin]

Thanks for keeping the updates coming and for spending the time and money!

Part of me wishes I could get my mind past shine-through keycaps. There are so many cool options out there that aren't shine-through. But I just find in my use case I really like to have the legends (right term?) lit up.

 

[sswilson]

Thanks for keeping the updates coming and for spending the time and money!

Part of me wishes I could get my mind past shine-through keycaps. There are so many cool options out there that aren't shine-through. But I just find in my use case I really like to have the legends (right term?) lit up.

I feel your pain. Not only are shine through keycap sets few and far between, the switch from north facing to south facing LEDs (for cherry keycap compatibility?) means that even if you find a shine through set, there's a good chance the lighting won't be very effective.

I finally just gave up in spite of having a keyboard location which really can make use of shine through.

 

[Lysrin]

I feel your pain. Not only are shine through keycap sets few and far between, the switch from north facing to south facing LEDs (for cherry keycap compatibility?) means that even if you find a shine through set, there's a good chance the lighting won't be very effective.

I finally just gave up in spite of having a keyboard location which really can make use of shine through.

You may get me there at some point given the cool looking keyboards you are building

I'll admit as much as I like a lot of the aspects of the ASUS one I knee-jerk purchased, the positioning of the arrow keys, Del key and such, are making switching back and forth from home to work keyboards a bit of a productivity hit. It's amazing how much muscle memory there is hitting those keys without looking and expecting them to be in a certain place.

I think a better choice for me may have been the Mountain Everest Max keyboard that would have given everything: normal layout in the TKL portion and complete flexibility with the numpad.

 

[sswilson]

You may get me there at some point given the cool looking keyboards you are building

I'll admit as much as I like a lot of the aspects of the ASUS one I knee-jerk purchased, the positioning of the arrow keys, Del key and such, are making switching back and forth from home to work keyboards a bit of a productivity hit. It's amazing how much muscle memory there is hitting those keys without looking and expecting them to be in a certain place.

I think a better choice for me may have been the Mountain Everest Max keyboard that would have given everything: normal layout in the TKL portion and complete flexibility with the numpad.

You're involved in coding in some way aren't you? I personally don't use much in the way of function keys so it's not an issue for me, but if a person uses things like the home and end key and/or (in your case) the arrow keys I can certainly see how different keyboard formats would be problematic.

 

[Lysrin]

You're involved in coding in some way aren't you? I personally don't use much in the way of function keys so it's not an issue for me, but if a person uses things like the home and end key and/or (in your case) the arrow keys I can certainly see how different keyboard formats would be problematic.

Yup exactly, and I get around my development environment and code a lot with shortcut keys, shift or ctrl combos with Home and End, etc. I didn't really think that through well with the ASUS purchase I will admit. I was just thinking about getting the numpad back in the still relatively small form factor. Ah well.

 

[sswilson]

Yup exactly, and I get around my development environment and code a lot with shortcut keys, shift or ctrl combos with Home and End, etc. I didn't really think that through well with the ASUS purchase I will admit. I was just thinking about getting the numpad back in the still relatively small form factor. Ah well.

It wouldn't resolve the special function keys, but I'm thinking that a stand-alone num pad goes a long way towards allowing a smaller format keyboard.