Hey all,
Had to sneak in one more review to the month, so here we go. This week, a deep dive into the new Gateron UHMknown switches - Gateron’s newest attempt at UHMWPE stems (and ink thermoplastic bottom housings), but this time with molds made just for these stems. Will these stack up to the recent successes that Gateron has been pushing through in their switches, or fall just short of that already insanely high bar to clear?
Website: https://www.theremingoat.com/
Article: Gateron UHMknown Switch Review — ThereminGoat's Switches
Scorecard Repository: GitHub - ThereminGoat/switch-scores: PDF Repository of switch score sheets.
Force Curve Repository: GitHub - ThereminGoat/force-curves: PDF and Data Repository of switch force curves.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theremingoat
As always thank you for the continued readership, love, and support. Just now having passed 2,100 switches in the collection and planning meetup visits for later this year has really reminded me of how awesome the community has been to be over the past few years of writing. I’m looking super forward to meeting even more of you at those meetups and getting to share the collection beyond just words on a screen!
Cheers,
Goat 
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Didn’t see that coming from the rest of the community praise🫣
Amazing stuff as always! 
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Gotta be weary of the hype echo chamber in the hobby sometimes. I had a good feeling these were gonna be meh switches (not bad, but not great either) since I wasn’t too impressed with the Hippos.
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I picked some up, but immediately ended up turning them into Frankenswitches by just pulling the UHMWPE stem and tossed in som Geon Cloud long-pole POM stems.
I couldn’t even tell you how the stem wobble compared to other UHMWPE stems.
(Side-by-side with my Cthulhus)
P.S. - This photo taken before the new switches were lubed and filmed
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How does the UHMknown Chthulu-ish frankenswitch sound compared to presumably Black Ink-based Chthulu?
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I’ll have to check when I am home, but if I recall, it was closer to my Gateron Cream Sodas than it was to the Kailh Burgundy stemmed Cthulhus. That is to say it was a little higher pitched, but not as loud as the bottom out on the Kailh-stemmed Cthulhus. With the Geon Cloud sliders, they also didn’t require long-pole stabilizers like the Kailh Cthulhus do either.
The UHMknowns have an Ink bottom and an “opaque” nylon PA66 top housing which is what is used on their milky top switches as well.
Not translucent like the milky tops, but definitely pass some light as seen from @ThereminGoat’s pic from his review.
Gateron states on their site that nylon PA66 is the same material that is used in making their Cap V2 switches, so I am rolling with that assumption that they have Gateron Milky(-ish) tops, Ink bottoms, and long-pole POM stems (sliders).
The stock spring isn’t bad and I don’t believe I had to film them at all because the housing was pretty good. Don’t recall offhand about the stem wobble though, but Gateron has been getting better as of late with their tolerances.
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Aha. Before deciding on which bottom housing to use for my Chuthulu set, I tested Oil King’s bottom housing I had in hand and surmised not all Ink-based bases are alike, at least acoustically. Oil King-based Chuthulu came out higher pitched but muted like UHMknown-based build. Based on that, I went with safer choice: Black Ink v2 bottom housing.
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Yeah, they seemed to be Oil King bottoms to my eye. I will have to examine one of the loose Oil Kings I have at home against to verify, but that would make sense about the higher pitch and being a little more muted.
The Geon sliders have had me going through and playing around with Frankenswitching other switches I have lying around. I like them much more than the WS/JWK MM stems for trying out different configurations.
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The Oil King & UHMknown tops are different than there milky tops. Definitely feels like a harder plastic, more similar to the black nylon tops Gateron uses. The milky tops feel & seem a good bit softer to me. Also both the Oil Kings & UMHknowns are full travel switches, that’s one of the big things that drew me to these.
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So I know I said I thought that these switches would be just middle of the road, although I was way wrong there. I recently lubed, filmed, & spring swapped my batch then threw them in my Frog 8K. I lubed them with good ole’ 205g0 (105 oil on the springs), used Geon’s poron foam films, & swapped the springs out for Geon 18mm 57.5g springs.They came out really smooth, extra punchy feeling compared to stock springs, & surprisingly don’t have the hugely higher pitch in sound associated with UHMPE stems. Still need to get more time with them to give a full opinion, but first impressions are very strong!
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