FFFF Tactile Switch

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Hi all! Haven’t found any information about FFFF tactile switch and wanted to share my thoughts, if you don’t mind.

Designed by Matrix Lab, manufactured by JWK.
Au$9 for a pack of 10 from ILUMKB
Colourway: Yellow top, black bottom, off-white stem
Tactility: mild and rounded, more prominent than browns I guess (haha)
Spring: 67g, noticeable ping
Housing: wobbly, like is this 2016 or something?
Sound: maybe similar to Cherry MX black housings
Others: scratchy, with factory lubed with oil on all parts of the stem
Mods: can use thicker films, definitely needs lubing

I bought the switch because I’m planning a Virtual War build, and wanted to colourmatch the switch.

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2

I think there was a slim chance to get in on a GB in Canada or U.S. around the summer on these. They interested me.

Good news is, JWK is getting better at tightening their housings. So if they remake this switch, it might be something that doesn’t need filming.

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I do hope JWK will tighten the housing.

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I think they already have with certain ones. The NK Dry/Silks have a revised top housing that is noticeably tighter & the Alpaca V2 molds supposedly have very tight tops & regular thickness on the housings.

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5

They are back at DeskHero:

I wonder how they compare to Penguins / RARA V2. Sounds like they might have the same stem. Penguins had good springs, though.

Maybe they are more like Dragonfruit.

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I have all of these other than Rara V2 (which I simply have yet to receive), so I can confirm they all use the same stem. Minor tooling/mold differences, to be sure, but the same type of stem.

Differences between them will be housing material, spring, and whether (and to what degree) they are factory lubed; those are (fairly) straightforward to predict if you’re familiar with how those change properties of other JWK-made switches. I don’t think any of them are going to be remarkably better (or worse) than the others.

Get the FFFF tactiles if you want a full-nylon version of JWK’s medium-tactile switch offering, but otherwise I’d caution against expecting anything beyond minor (and addressable with films/aftermarket springs/relubing) differences.

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Thanks. The FFFF are available, but there are user reports of scratchiness / leaf noise in them. You’re right that these are all variations of the same stem / housing.

Like you, I simply have to wait for my RARA V2 arrive, so between those and Taro Ball, I will definitely be covered for Durock Medium Tactile.

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Honestly I think some feel/sound scratchiness is to be expected with nylon housings; I think most of my nylon-housed switches have it to some extent or other.

As for the leaf ping, I fear this may just be the new normal. I can’t think of a tactile—other than Bobas?—I’ve acquired recently that doesn’t feature it to some extent (although in most cases it would likely not be noticeable in an actual build), which leads me to believe it is a problem that goes beyond individual manufacturers’ practices. I’d be extremely happy to find that this is not the case, however.

EDIT: Whatever Gateron was doing with the leaves in the very first batch of V2 Zealios/Zilents seems like sorcery compared to whatever seemingly everyone from Gateron to Tecsee to JWK is doing now with their leaves. I have over a hundred R1 Zealio V2s that feature no leaf ping whatsoever, so I feel reasonably comfortable ruling out a common hypothesis people have that the bumps on modern tactiles are just too big to make leaves not ping.

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