Hi fellow earthicans,
A couple of months ago I bought Kailh Bix Jades (Retooled) Kailh BOX Jade (retooled) / 10pcs – KEYGEM. Used them ever since. Now I’ve stumbled upon Kailh Bix Jade Thick on Kailh Box Jade Thick Clicky Switches – Divinikey.
Does anyone happen to know the difference? Or are they the same? Just labled differently, since the one store is EU and the other US.
As divinikey state on their site it has a thicker click bar and was designed by Novelkeys. Are they old, or new and may there also be a shop (preferrably in Europe) that have them in stock?
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Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but
IIRC, retooled simply means that it’s the new Jades that don’t wreck stems anymore.
Thick click is all jades. Jades were designed by novelkeys and they were all designed to be “thick clicks” as in having the thicker click bar compared to box whites which have a narrower one.
All jades in production and being sold at the moment should be the new revised stem versions
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I still find them strechting keycaps, not wreck level like they used to, with visible strech marks but if you have switches with loose stems that some set is borderline fitting/loose, after a while on BOX switches they’re going to be loosely fitting,
But then again, very thick switch stems seems like a recent trend with a lot of latest switches having very thick stems, U4Ts, JWK, Tecsee are some examples, all of them strech keycaps too.
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Can confirm. Same with R2 UHMWPE stems from 415keys. (I think they’re up to 4 or 5 now, though.)
Since I quarantined my questionable BOX switches and sworn-off shimming with anything but PTFE tape I haven’t had a single cracked stem - but I’ve had plenty with visible stress marks, many of which came from post-retool BOX switches. While they aren’t in “avoid like the plague” territory anymore, I do still think they’re in need of a further retool. If I had one of those cruciformer tools or something like that I could use to shave the stems down / force them into spec, I’d probably run half my collection through it.
I understand the original cruciformer tool design is hard to pull off; the dimensions have to be exact and I think they have to be sharpened to some degree - I’m wondering if a less nuanced tool might also work. Instead of having a precision shaving device, what about a dumb brute force method? Basically a really chonky hardened metal stem to mush the mount closer to the correct shape.
IDK. Whenever I find a reasonable path for it, I’m willing to expend some real effort to completely remove the sussy cloud hanging over some of my otherwise favorite switches.
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Thanks for the insights. For me it’s like the other way around. The switch stems seem ok and quite sturdy, but their female counterpart in the keycaps however (what do you call those notches inside the caps?). A few of them have been blessed with fine hair cracks over putting them on a few times. But we’re talking about wasd keyboards ABS keycaps here. And they are a bit on the lighter side.
That’s the way I mean - it’s the switch stems that damage the cap stems, by virtue of being slightly too large.
Current Kailh BOX stems (and some others mentioned) will cause those little stress marks and even cracks on cheaper caps like those stock WASD ones - but the pre-retool stems would straight up demolish them, and I mean just about any cap, not just dainty stock ones.
Signature Plastics’ SA keys are famous for being thicc and chonky, but not even they can survive those initial BOX mounts - stems cracked completely open, falling right off of switches after that.
I have three unusable keycap sets (including one MT3 
) from a set of pre-retool BOX switches that had been mixed into a newer batch (some rando seller on Ali, I think); from that point I only picked up BOX switches from retailers at the top of my most trusted list. NovelKeys is a good source, and Kono still has some old ones for sale but has the good sense to label them.
SwitchCaptain is the vendor that probably goes the farthest when it comes to ensuring authenticity; every single pack they sell is individually tracked and tied to specific batch numbers from the manufacturers. If you get bunk switches from them, not only will they replace them like any reasonable vendor, they will know exactly which batch they came from and be able to communicate with the MFR about it.
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