I’ve mainly used MX Browns on factory alum plates like Filco and Leopold.
I don’t like that combination, but it’s mostly because of tray mount.
The alum does increase harshness, and possibly ping. But also gives a more solid feel to the Browns.
It’s the tray-mount that bothers me. It leads to an inconsistent sound profile. It may increase ping, as well.
So a factory board with MX Brown is like a ping machine, until the switches wear-in and you switch to thick keycaps. The alum gives a harsher, metallic and higher-pitched sound.
I’ve found top-mount to be very important for taciles, if you want them to feel crisp. My Meteor Orange and Everglide Jade Green boards feel like “MX Browns done right” in comparison to factory. They both use polycarb plates, BTW, but I think Cherry switches benefit less from that.
Metal plate is not necessarily the wrong answer. I found that KTT Mallo types better in a stock metal-plate MK870 [alum?] as opposed to PC. Metal gives those Brown-like switches the solidity I need. [Or maybe I am just used to this configuration with Browns.]
I tried Hyperglide Browns alongside a bunch of other stuff in a polishing machine. Even with 320,000 actuations, there’s barely any improvement. And I think Ergo Clears start to lose their hand-lube and films might start going awry. Not much experience with this. But polishing was not worthwhile at 320,000 actuations for me.
Here is my current understanding on what an MX Brown board “done right” would look like:
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Hand-picked MX Browns of whatever type. This is really important. They are not all awesome from factory, obviously. So you should start by figuring out which are worth soldering.
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Polishing - If you can safely reach a large amount of actuations, it may be worthwhile to polish Browns. The old pre-tooled Browns like on my MJ2 took a good amount of time to wear-in.
The old method, used with Ergo Clears, was just to type on them for a month before starting custom work on them.
- Lube, film, and spring-swap? If you can find a spring that works for you, great. Cherry springs are far from ideal. 55 G Spirit was too light for me. I should have tried 57-58.5 G. Some people like 55 G 14mm TX.
Cherry switches need the kind of improvements that films deliver, but I don’t see a huge jump in quality from using films so far, except with some carefully-built Ergo Clears from a while back.
As far as lube goes, Browns don’t take to lube as well as Clears. They are somewhat notorious for this. You can use 3203 for smoothness. It won’t improve sound, and feels kinda syrupy IMHO.
Normal-lubing with 3204 is probably overkill, I’ve seen better results from very, very careful application of 205g0.
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Put them in a top-mount board. This is very important.
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Polycarb will give you a deeper, plasticy burp sound and a softer typing experience. Aluminum is more higher-pitched and clangy-feeling. Steel can give a very low, resonant sound but it is a harsher typing experience. I don’t know how POM would feel, but it’s worth trying.
The best performance will come from selecting good Browns, and putting them in top-mount. The rest is user preference.
Also, the best keycaps in my experience are thick DCS. The thicker [e.g. classic WYSE] the better.
Anyway, I’ve never built an ‘improved MX Brown’ board, only boards using switches that are said to be better than MX Brown. (I used to think that plateless is the way to go, but I think it actually is fairly harsh slamming on the PCB, at least on an NCR-80. Tried that with Ergo Clears.)
Curiously, some of the best Browns I ever typed on were on a factory Keycool 84 with Cherry or Gat. Browns. It was just so smooth and light, with GMK keycaps. I think it’s the way Cherry wanted things.