@kimslawson also, one other small visual cue between the otherwise identical looking switches is that the full-silent ones use a silver two-stage spring, while the ones with a clacky top-out have a gold two-stage spring.
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Anyone know if there are two stage springs lighter than 50g?
Here. They also have non-gold versions:
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Prevail Nebula switches
Purple. Pretty. Pre-lubed.
Talks of yet another stem material and improved lubing method caught my interest…
…and of course the purple sparkliness.
So yeah! Of course I’m going to try them.
In the hand, they feel super smooth. Seems like a fair bit of N/S wobble. Sound seems really clean but can only tell so much before mounting - which is what I’m gonna do right now.
Edit; First impressions in a board:
They aight.
Definitely really smooth - but a far cry from Epsilons when it comes to tolerances. These are like linear Dragonfruits in terms of how much room the stem has to move around. E/W isn’t too bad but N/S is immediately noticeable. What else is immediately noticeable is the slinky wiggly spring noise. They’re long-pole, and like most of those they do teeter a bit when held at-bottom - and of course they’re shorter travel. I used 4 of OKLB’s stem shims (“North-facing compatibility washers”) on each stab stem to even them up with the switches.
Also worth noting; they do fit caps a little bit loose. Not as loose as the Perlios I was typing on earlier, which are not as loose as Lychees - but more loose than normal.
These scintillating, gorgeous grape jelly linears aren’t bad at all, but Epsilons are a tough act to follow. Unlike those which only need tuning if you’re picky, these I could only solidly recommend if you don’t mind donut-dipping or bag-lubing springs. If you don’t mind wobble or spring noise, these are really smooth from the bag and do make a nice clacky sound - it’s just not super clean in stock form.
So yeh - my next plan is to see how the stems do in Gazzew housings and see how a few stems do in theirs.
Quick typing test:
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Dammit. I had high hopes for these ones. They just look so neat. Great stock for frankenswitches though for sure.
TX Stabs! Super stoked that I’ve officially gotten everything on my WTB page. I’ll write about them when I’m done tuning them.
Sad to say, but in stock form, TX perform similarly to my tear-infused, depression-sending Durocks. Stab assesment 5, coming up…
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yes, they definitely need the usual treatment to sound good. I think they became so popular because people needed clip in stabilizers for Bakeneko boards and they are miles better than the other offerings.
They are good once you lube them properly. But as you said, not far off from Durock
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Yup. Lubed it with 205g0 only, and can confirm it works well. I’m gonna need to stockpile these.
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Got this fun little toolbox. Two of them actually, as they are quite small.
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I love organization. I wish I could find an actual storage system I like though. My whole collection of bins is a rather motley one.
Got a Wormwood in from Nightcaps Pastels & Farewells sale! Not sure of the name of the colorway as they weren’t mentioned for any of the sculpts in this sale, although all the caps were variations of this pink, blue, & white.
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Edit: There was a bit off ticking, so I lubed them again, this time with dielectric grease. At this point anything works, so I won’t bother choosing one method for all my stabs. Guess they just vary.
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I fear I almost managed to annoy Keebmonkey to death and they sent me a keyset instead of replying to even more of my ignorant emails. 
Wrote about the Keytok Morse here: Keytok two-part "OEM"
And dumped some photos here: https://imgur.com/gallery/ezK6g9T
(Btw, try the discount code KBDNEWS for 5% off if you see something cool in their shop.)
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Hey, high five! Thanks for writing about these - I knew they were novel and interesting but I really hadn’t seem them up close and generally knew nothing about them. They’re more novel and interesting than I first realized - very unique two-part thing going on.
Yep, exactly. The shape is really unique and it raised my attention at first glance. I may do some comparison shots with the single Cherry set I own but I don’t have any OEM sets – as I wrote in my original post, I’m not really into keycaps, especially in these conventional profiles.
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So those new clear switches from Gateron…
They’re like… really clear
And wow! Do they catch the light - the Sun in this case.
Bracketed-down so you can actually see the switch
For real, though - I’ve collected plenty of clear switches since Aqua Kings came out - none of them so thoroughly resemble a wet ice cube as these North Poles do.
Supposedly polycarb housing with an Ink material stem. Housing design appears derivative from the G-Pro 2.0, complete with the same light lens. Factory lubed, zero travel noise - they feel really smooth but there’s a kind of resistance - kind of like Frogs or (surprise) Aqua Kings.
First impression in-hand, these are the real “aqua kings” - but I’ll have to run a few thousand words over them before I can say for sure. All I can tell you right now is that they knocked the “ice” look out of the park.
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I finally got Staebies! Thanks @heebiekeebies!
And now I have no real reason to not take care of my planned rebuilds on my to-do backlog.
- Desolder SPFS to replace the old switches with TTC Wilds and finally fix the enter stab
- Desolder keycult to replace spacebar stab
- Desolder J01 because the stab mod I did was a huge mistake
All that said, does anyone have a recommendation for a desoldering station that won’t cost me an arm and a leg? I know the hakko is nice but it’s like $700 and I’d rather not go for ~300 switches with my SS02
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This sounds like a job for the FR-301.
https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FR-301-Desoldering-Tool/dp/B07BKSLLG9
I’m actually getting ready to de-solder a full-size with mine this evening. Glarses meme ha ha but yeah it’s legit, usually goes for about $300, sometimes less.
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