Well I learned something today; I kind of hate how linear switches sound, no matter the board.
I’ve tried three varieties - Gateron Oil Kings, Kalih Islets, and Glorious Foxes.
I’ve tried them on aluminum and plastic, with cherry and MT3 caps and I just don’t like how empty the typing feels. Like I’ve got to really hammer the keys to get any sense of feedback.
My actual typing skill feels worse as well, with a bunch of accidental keypresses.
At least on my NCR-80 with the feet up, there’s enough reverb to offer some amount of pleasant feedback.
I’m going to give some tactiles a shot but I think I’m firmly in the click gang 4 lyfe.
Over time, I think I have been moving in the opposite direction. I have a hunch that playing WoW again is what cause the change.
I have been a long time tactile user, but is wasn’t until I started playing games on the computer again and heavily using WASD that I noticed that kind of rubbing leaf sound that comes with tactile switches. Some of it is the bump obviously, but I believe it is the leaf too. I think another issues is that a some switches have leaf issues (JWK, etc.), and then tactiles from those manu. further add to this sound. I just feel like something changed in me really recently where I can’t stand this noise anymore, and linears don’t have that.
We will see though. I just picked up some Cherry Browns again that I need to mod, test and install. I have been chatting with some people in my local scene, and it sounds like at least Cherry has pretty quality, consistent leaves so maybe my issue will be less of a problem with Browns.
I share your feelings. I recently spent a week with Gateron Reds after many years of being on Cherry MX Clears, and then a few weeks on Gateron Browns, and I honestly have to agree with you.
Since I got no feedback from actuation, and as a result I had no intuitive tactile intuition for where in its travel the switch actually even actuated, I felt like both for satisfaction and for accuracy I had to bottom the switch out every time, which admittedly sounded good on the combination of board and keycaps that I had, but was jarring for my tendonitis and also led to much slower typing as my fingers had much further to travel now and were farther embedded between the surrounding keys while typing. As soon as I switched back to tactile switches, my average words for a minute shot up by 10wpm!
I felt the same way about linears but wanted to find out why so many people raved about linears. That journey, still ongoing, is in this thread:
My answer to lack of feedback question is that the sound of switch bottoming out is the feedback. It doesn’t provide actuation feedback but that didn’t bother me as much as lack of tactility. It’s a firm feedback that can please the ears as well as fingers, bringing out more of each switch’s character than tactile bumps can.
Lube comes after the feedback issue. With 205g0 dominating and not a lot of choices but a lot of learning to be had as how each switch responds to lube is pretty wide.
Past all that I am now in what I’d call the ‘Spring Phase’. I started to enjoy the mild tactility from long springs. It’s not sharp tactility but gentle swooning chewy type that’s really pleasant. Long springs also increase the force striking the housing bottom, making it louder. In many switches, this brings out new sound. Switch spring swap rabbit hole is deep and wide, a big playground.