Hey y’all, I know next to nothing about ALPs switches, but i have a duck raven and a DCS ALPs yuri keyset on the way so all that’s missing are switches and stabs. I want to build the best ALPS board possible. I generally prefer linear switches, but I know there are people that are all about the tactile alps switches and they’re different than MX tactile, so I’m pretty open to what to use. The only ones I’ve used were Matias click and I did not care for them that much. I have no reservations about getting an old board and harvesting the switches out of it either. Is lubing a thing for ALPs? Also, side question, does anyone know what stabs I need?
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Tactile: Orange or Browns
Linear: Greens or Black
For all alps, make sure they are as clean as a whistle if possible.
Avoid Matias switches at all costs.
Get an old board and hardvest for the best results.
Some people do lube alps, but typically use an extremely light coating or even dry lube.
You should use the stabs you get from the board you harvested it from. Make sure you have a compatible plate
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Signature plastics only has Cherry stabilizer mounts available on their alps caps, so you will need Cherry stabilizers. The raven plate has alps stabilizer cutouts, unfortunately. You’ll have to mod the plate for Cherry cutouts. The good news is that the pcb has both mx and alps support, so you’ll have access to PCB mount Cherry stabilizer holes.
If I were you, I would take a standard 60% plate and lay it on top of the raven to trace out the Cherry stabilizer holes and dremel them out
Either that or have a custom plate cut.
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Ah that sounds like a good plan, thanks!
Okay, thanks for the recs, do you have a favorite?
For Tactiles, my favorite are browns, but they can be on the heavy side with a very large tactile bump. Oranges are favored by many for being a calmer version of the browns.
For linears, I’d go MX over alps every day of the week and twice on sundays.
For clickies, Blue alps.
Other Alps I’ve heard decent things about but haven’t tried in my own keyboards:
Salmon Alps
Amber Alps
Alps switches that can be “okay”
White Alps - Clicky
Dampened Creams - in case you need a ‘silent(ish)’ alps board
As a further note on lubing; from the Deskthority Wiki;
Lubrication does not improve the feel of a thoroughly cleaned switch by much. Both XMIT and Hypersphere on Deskthority have had good experience with an extremely light coating of Super Lube Oil with PTFE, a synthetic oil with Teflon particles in suspension, on the switch sliders and the slider guides on the switch top housings.
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awesome, thanks! After reading a bit more it sounds like I want salmon or brown.
Well @Manofinterests & @pixelpusher covered about everything we can tell you. I love me some linear ALPS, but the tactiles & clickys are really where it’s at with SKCM/L ALPS IMHO. I would look more into oranges & salmons if you’re trying to keep to a budget as brown ALPS are quite expensive & much harder to find good ones of. Although brown ALPS are my absolute fav ALPS switch & I would recommend going through the trouble & cost to get them if you are not on a budget. Oranges felt great in my Raven before I linearized them so I’d imagine browns would be that much better in it. Really can’t go wrong either way as long as they are in good shape TBH.
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Thanks my dude, I knew you were a big fan of some alps. I don’t mind spending the time/money on browns, so I’ll probably go for those it sounds like.
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dang I forgot how annoying finding vintage switches is I guess I gotta put in some work to find some
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Watch Chyrosran22s videos.
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It is worth noting also that you can take Alps switches with leaves and remove the leaf, making pretty nice linear switches. I learned this trick from chyrosran (who but Thomas Ran)
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boi im really boutta geetcho pickle chin ah boi SKCM Black is tactile. You need to mod them by taking out the tactile leaf, then they have the same weighting as SKCL Green.
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Ha! I remember watching that video when you posted it in that thread