Mechanical Keyboard Autism Thread - Because Cherry MX switches get you laid.

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I'm gonna order one of these and make a keyboard where every switch is different. Do you have any idea how spectacularly offensive that would sound?
 
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Rusty Crab said:

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I'm gonna order one of these and make a keyboard where every switch is different. Do you have any idea how spectacularly offensive that would sound?
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Eh, there would be major INFOSEC concerns with that, as it is each key in a lot of keyboards already sound different, and can be used to gain log in credentials. Having something where each key has an obviously different sound would make it all the easier.

And if you want "Spectacularly offensive"

 
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Slav Power said:
My current mech (which is my very first mech) is a Corsair K70 LUX, with MX Browns and red backlighting.
View attachment 1739546not my pic
I've also attached folded sticky notes wrapped with transparent tape with blu tack under the palm rest to keep it in a more comfier angle. The red backlight is great, because it doesn't hurt my eyes at night, and if it was RGB, I'd probably use the red backlight anyway, but then again I wouldn't install iCUE because it's a bloated mess, worse than GHUB. And I prefer for my keyboard to have backlighting, because it helps when sitting at night with the lights off. I also prefer tactile keys, since I'm used to feeling some kind of bump when pressing keys. Maybe some day I'll get a more specialized mechboard with fancy switched and double shot keycaps, but for now this'll do.
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I got the same. But with Cherry Blues.
Also, my K70 died suddenly. I brought it back with a COMPLETE cleaning - down to the PCB. the 'additionals' (volume/win-lock/media controls/ and my beloved VOLUME ROLLER) had to be disabled to remove the PCB and never came back. Sniff.

I have crappy utilities. After a power spike/drop the K70 will 'awaken' with a 'wave pattern' rolling across the kb. This occurs with my PC OFF!! It has happened at least a dozen time.

Have you ever experienced this @Slav Power ?
 
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Orange Rhymer said:
I got the same. But with Cherry Blues.
Also, my K70 died suddenly. I brought it back with a COMPLETE cleaning - down to the PCB. the 'additionals' (volume/win-lock/media controls/ and my beloved VOLUME ROLLER) had to be disabled to remove the PCB and never came back. Sniff.

I have crappy utilities. After a power spike/drop the K70 will 'awaken' with a 'wave pattern' rolling across the kb. This occurs with my PC OFF!! It has happened at least a dozen time.

Have you ever experienced this @Slav Power ?
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That's probably the demo mode, if the keyboard gets powered up without having a clear signal it's hooked up to a device that can utilize the keyboard, it will do a lightshow thingy. If it kicks in after the PC has booted up, you will have to plug the keyboard out and in again to make it register the fact it's hooked up to a working PC.
 
After 10 years I switched from mx browns to blues, and I love it.
Trusty old one is now stored, having survived around 5 times beer spilling inside it.

Got this one hyperx alloy rgb something something
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Removed the wrist rest and didn't put in the horrid WASD keys. Looks quite nice except for the logo there. Good media key controls with the volume wheel. Also spent lot of autistic work setting up different backlight profiles only to end up using a uniform amber color because it's just the most pleasant. Would've gotten nonRGB keyboard, but they're at best red backlight and at worst blue, and that sucks. And I need backlight for when I need to type in the US layout.
Big bad: If you don't sit very close to it, the capslock indicator LED is obscured behind the numpad keys. Gotta get a software one.


I don't actually mind old mushy membrane keyboards that much, have some for backups and other stuff. So long as it's not a laptop-style low-profile keyboard I can handle it. Looking at reddit (always a big mistake) one'd think that touching a membrane keyboard would kill another 6 million or something.
 
Battlecruiser3000ad said:
After 10 years I switched from mx browns to blues, and I love it.
Trusty old one is now stored, having survived around 5 times beer spilling inside it.

Got this one hyperx alloy rgb something something
View attachment 1748479
Removed the wrist rest and didn't put in the horrid WASD keys. Looks quite nice except for the logo there. Good media key controls with the volume wheel. Also spent lot of autistic work setting up different backlight profiles only to end up using a uniform amber color because it's just the most pleasant. Would've gotten nonRGB keyboard, but they're at best red backlight and at worst blue, and that sucks. And I need backlight for when I need to type in the US layout.
Big bad: If you don't sit very close to it, the capslock indicator LED is obscured behind the numpad keys. Gotta get a software one.


I don't actually mind old mushy membrane keyboards that much, have some for backups and other stuff. So long as it's not a laptop-style low-profile keyboard I can handle it. Looking at reddit (always a big mistake) one'd think that touching a membrane keyboard would kill another 6 million or something.
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Welcome to the blue club. I thought about changing away from them, but then realized it was just my cheap China keyboard that felt like shit. The blues in this Ducky feel like a night and day difference. Glad I stuck with blues.
 
Bought myself a new keyboard last week. Swapped out some Corsair RGB keyboard for a Reddragon K556. So far I'm loving the clicking sounds it makes and the RGB on it isn't bad. Switches on it are mechanical brown last time I checked and I'm loving the smaller size it has. Only downside is not having a volume button on it but I still got the manual that'll tell me what FN + key I need to press to raise and lower it.
 
Just Some Other Guy said:
Welcome to the blue club. I thought about changing away from them, but then realized it was just my cheap China keyboard that felt like shit. The blues in this Ducky feel like a night and day difference. Glad I stuck with blues.
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I went in the opposite direction. I used to love the sound of blues and now I can't stand them. Starting to go towards more linear switches and just keeping the bottom-out sound.

My issue the browns I have now is that they f'kin squeak sometimes. I lubed them and it helped to an extent but it's still there and occasionally distracts me while typing. I haven't seen anybody else mentioning this so I'm wondering if it's just something wrong with the batch I got.
 
Rusty Crab said:
I went in the opposite direction. I used to love the sound of blues and now I can't stand them. Starting to go towards more linear switches and just keeping the bottom-out sound.

My issue the browns I have now is that they f'kin squeak sometimes. I lubed them and it helped to an extent but it's still there and occasionally distracts me while typing. I haven't seen anybody else mentioning this so I'm wondering if it's just something wrong with the batch I got.
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Unless you're really old or come from mega-nerd parents or something, our stories look alike.

In the beginning we typed on rubber domes, and they were good. They were cheap, they felt good, and they didn't annoy everyone around us. But then the internet told us we should stop typing on them lest we die, or something.

So we bought these loud, clicky devices and we told ourselves that they were good, but to do this we ignored much. They were expensive, shrill, and caused loved ones to look at us as weebs.

But I've been to the end of the book, and I know how this story ends. Though we stray, the story's arc bends back into itself, and is made of rubber. It is a rubber dome, thocking and undulating forever.

Now we type on Topre switches, and they are very good. And the masses resent us, for they know we are right.
 
malt ipecac said:
Unless you're really old or come from mega-nerd parents or something, our stories look alike.

In the beginning we typed on rubber domes, and they were good. They were cheap, they felt good, and they didn't annoy everyone around us. But then the internet told us we should stop typing on them lest we die, or something.

So we bought these loud, clicky devices and we told ourselves that they were good, but to do this we ignored much. They were expensive, shrill, and caused loved ones to look at us as weebs.

But I've been to the end of the book, and I know how this story ends. Though we stray, the story's arc bends back into itself, and is made of rubber. It is a rubber dome, thocking and undulating forever.

Now we type on Topre switches, and they are very good. And the masses resent us, for they know we are right.
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IBM Ms and Fs are Rubber Domes too, but like Topres are given the honorary title of MK.

A vast majority (maybe even all other) rubber domes have nothing of Ms, Fs, or Topres.
 
I can't say how they feel because I've never used them, but I really, really do not like the sound of Topres.

I still like the volume out of mechanical keyboards, I just like it more crisp and bassy.
 
Rusty Crab said:
I can't say how they feel because I've never used them, but I really, really do not like the sound of Topres.

I still like the volume out of mechanical keyboards, I just like it more crisp and bassy.
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They feel really good (for rubber domes), that being said my only experience with Topre is the "cheap" type heaven keyboard I got when I was at a job I couldn't even use reds or browns because of sound concerns. I would assume the True Type boards feel even better.

I got a lot of normie coworkers tell me how great my Topre keyboard felt to type on when they forgot to reset their passwords and I needed them to type a new one in AD (because the GroupPolicies were so fucked up there was no way for me even logged in as Domain Admin to force a password reset on login, AD would just deny any attempt to reset a password by the user after a password reset).
 
Rubber dome wasn't really the default in my experience. Cherry keyboards were super common here in Germany, still are really. Every government office place I've seen had a cherry keyboard (with the default black MX switches these have) and this hasn't really changed in the last decades, same with private offices. If you bought a computer, the minimally more expensive option for keyboard was Cherry. (although these were sometimes rubber dome) For big orders, cherry customizes the keyboard cases with the logo of your company. A big electronic parts retailer here also carries cherry switches for pretty cheap and you can pick up G80-1800 used for like ten eurobucks. (new ~70-80) My local pharmacy uses G80-11900. (integrated touchpad) I guess it's not really surprising if you consider that cherry is a german company. I might actually go with a cherry keyboard again after all is said and done because it comes in good old boring beige "off-color white" and has PS/2 which is kinda important for my old computers. Problem is the size, the G80-1800 is the smallest with proper MX switches, the people on reddit say the build quality is lacking but these are people that pay 30+ bucks for USB-C cables so maybe nobody should listen to them.

(EDIT: Also they apparently all hate cherry now?!)
 
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Rusty Crab said:
Cherry is ok, but I'm starting to see why enthusiasts don't like them all that much. They're probably fine for 99% of people, but that won't get you updoots on reddit.
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That subreddit is incredibly autistic. I swear anytime I find a subreddit when searching for an answer to something (hobby or not), it's always the same levels of autism. Painting, mechanical keyboards, 3d printing, my old craftsman tablesaw (Yes, there is a subreddit dedicated entirely to Craftsman 113 tablesaw). All the same.
 
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Rusty Crab said:
Cherry is ok, but I'm starting to see why enthusiasts don't like them all that much. They're probably fine for 99% of people, but that won't get you updoots on reddit.
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Honestly I don't get it, but then again the only normal (I don't count hall effect and the wooting one as 'normal') other mech switches outside of Cherry I have used have been cheap Chinese knock offs that were really scratchy.
 
stupidpieceofshit said:
Honestly I don't get it, but then again the only normal (I don't count hall effect and the wooting one as 'normal') other mech switches outside of Cherry I have used have been cheap Chinese knock offs that were really scratchy.
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I'm not a connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I gather (and experienced to a degree), the biggest complains are about the most popular switches. Browns are not actually tactile (own them, can confirm they really aren't). For blues, they just sound messy rather than crisp. Judging from comparisons to other similarly priced clicky switches, that seems to be true. If you're an audiophile(?) for switches, that would probably bother you a lot. For reds, the complaint I hear is that they're just not that smooth for being marketed as such.

As I mentioned also, I have browns and if you don't lube them, they make an absolutely horrendous squeaking noise. Even when you do lube them, it will come back (and soon). But also as stated, I don't see people complaining about that particular noise (just them being scratchy) so I wonder if I just got unlucky.

But, I think most of the hate comes from the fact that they're often marketed as the be-all-end-all of switches and so it's a pretty big letdown when you get them and they're just very average.
 
Rusty Crab said:
I'm not a connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I gather (and experienced to a degree), the biggest complains are about the most popular switches. Browns are not actually tactile (own them, can confirm they really aren't). For blues, they just sound messy rather than crisp. Judging from comparisons to other similarly priced clicky switches, that seems to be true. If you're an audiophile(?) for switches, that would probably bother you a lot. For reds, the complaint I hear is that they're just not that smooth for being marketed as such.

As I mentioned also, I have browns and if you don't lube them, they make an absolutely horrendous squeaking noise. Even when you do lube them, it will come back (and soon). But also as stated, I don't see people complaining about that particular noise (just them being scratchy) so I wonder if I just got unlucky.

But, I think most of the hate comes from the fact that they're often marketed as the be-all-end-all of switches and so it's a pretty big letdown when you get them and they're just very average.
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honestly most of the time I type on my mechs I have headphones on.
That also being said the "issue" at least how I think of it for Cherries and their sound isn't the switch them selves, but the material of the boards. My IBMs Ms and F have a nice metallic ping to them (as does my IBM pingmaster) but that is because they have a metal plate in them.
 
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stupidpieceofshit said:
honestly most of the time I type on my mechs I have headphones on.
That also being said the "issue" at least how I think of it for Cherries and their sound isn't the switch them selves, but the material of the boards. My IBMs Ms and F have a nice metallic ping to them (as does my IBM pingmaster) but that is because they have a metal plate in them.
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The board itself matters a lot. Are the switches in the open or enclosed in the board? What's the housing material/ thickness?

The ducky sounds just fine with the cherry blues. That 5mm thick zinc housing probably helps.
 
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