Are those JWK ultimates supposed to be a competitor to Gateron Xs? I saw them last week & almost pulled the trigger on some, but had an unexpected bill so I decided to wait. Let us know how they are once you get some time with them. Also what’s up with those next switches? Kinda interesting since I never heard of them.
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as far as i understand the ultimate blacks are more or less the same as the “jwk c black v2” but with the newest molds and a new upper housing material that is going for the gateron ink kind of thing. sound seems to be a bit deeper and a bit more muted than most other jwk switches. and i don’t know much about the next switches. they are 42g linears with factory lubed leafs. PC housing POM stem. but the molds don’t match any other switches that i have so i assume it’s either their own mold or a new manufacturer.
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Ah I see, thought there may be something extra going on with the ultimate naming. The Next switches are definitely something I’m gonna look into since you are saying the mold marks don’t match anything you’ve seen before. Thanks for the info! 
Where did you get those black o-rings? I’d like to try and blackout a tray mount build and think these would be perfect.
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i got them from this o-ring store on aliexpress. still trying to figure out the proper dimensions for a “gummy o-ring mount” o-ring for 60% boards but here’s the link to those tiny ones. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32959983165.html
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This is the one I bought, but I specifically wanted 30 duro - AS568-259 S30 Silicone O-Ring 30 Duro [S30259] : The O-Ring Store LLC, We make getting O-Rings easy!
There is also some good info in the Bakeneko creator’s discord - Discord
#bakeneko60-parts-guide
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Some nylon stem ice candy and jwick blacks from thockeys, that for some reason took two weeks to get here.
Kinda bummer for both. The ice candy are only slightly less binding on off-center press than the full PC version. Lube helps, but lube will wear off.
The JWICKs… dunno. They feel and sound like a JWK clacky switch. I mean, they don’t need to be filmed, but they certainly don’t sound like a nylon switch. Maybe these really are knockoffs since they don’t have the logo, even though Thockeys has a statement on their website that they bought directly from JWK.
My first taste of Hipro from @norbauer
Didn’t look closely enough to notice there was no key for right shift, but this will do for now. Loving the mix and match look.
Now I just need my Heavy Grail
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This reenforces for me the notion that pigment (or lack thereof) seems to play a role in the performance characteristics of plastics. Some examples:
- Different color YOK housings sound different in pitch to me.
- We’ve had Nylon switches from the beginning, but clear Nylon bits not so much - I’m sure there’s a reason for this but I have no idea what it is.
- Equalz (Tangie) UHMWPE tops look, sound, and feel pretty different from Tecsee UHMWPE tops.
- NK Cream stems (which I assume are close to natural plastic color) are POM and most other stems are POM, but they do kinda feel (and smell) different. Surface smoothness? Density? Who knows - but most of my switches don’t smell like these do when I open the jar after a while - though some do.
It also seems like there are other un-tracked factors that have meaningful impacts as far as consumers like us are concerned.
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Hardness: this is the factor I think I’d like to see quantified most. Generally we know things like polycarbonate plates are soft as far as plates go, and polycarbonate housings are hard as far as switch housings go - but I know folks have had the experience of expecting one thing and getting another when it comes to the effects of materials on a given switch. I have some “Nylon” bottoms that sound and feel like rocks, and I have some others that are soft enough to absorb high frequency vibrations; deepening the sound and taking the edge off of the feel.
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Hardness again, but specifically for stems: In most cases I think this would be trivial information, perhaps only correlating to something like a small part of the overall sound pitch, but below a certain point this becomes important AFAIC. If a switch stem is soft enough that it can be damaged by holding a key down a little too hard, that’s something I think the consumer should have the chance to know before they buy. So far, I’ve only seen this be an issue with stems made of pure UHMWPE - but with UHMWPE blends it seems less easy to know what you’re getting into. A given company’s “secret proprietary blend” might be 99.5% UHMWPE and 0.5% fairy dust, but having a rating for how deform-able the plastic is would tell us what we need to know without disclosing any industry secrets.
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Hardness one more time, but for caps - this might be useful for getting an idea for how quickly an ABS set might shine, or how susceptible a given set might be to stem-breakage from out-of-spec switches.
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Density: knowing a housing is this or that type of plastic can tell us something about how dense or firm we can expect it to be, but a quantified measurement would be amazing. I’d be curious to compare the density and hardness of, say, polycarbonate JWK housings and PBT Moyu housings.
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Stem resting height from PCB: this is more of a whole-switch stat, and one that I almost never see listed. I’ve had conversations with a few other users about how most switches have the keys resting at roughly the same position, but that some will have the keys resting significantly higher or lower than that average. (Example: Gateron silents sit higher, Gazzews sit lower.) I think this would be a useful metric for builders who want or need to consider how the caps and case relate; while a given build with Bobas might hide the bottom edge of the keycaps with the case, the very same build with Zilents might show those bottom edges peeking-up over the bezel.
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As far as the impact of pigments to various material qualities goes, they paint racecar chassis and bodies in white for that reason (when they even paint them). White paint is lighter, or less dense, than any pigmented paint.
So depending on the pigment, what it’s made from (I believe many pigments are mineral or metallic based), and how much is applied you could get some variability in the switch’s qualities. Especially if you consider the relative size of a switch compared to the volume of the material that composes it. Thus seemingly subtle differences could make a significant difference.
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To be fair, I’m not entirely sure the fish smell from certain batches of creams is due to the pigment. Fortunately (unfortunately?), the smell has almost entirely faded from the one smelly batch I got.
Ha, I’d say fortunately.
My Cobalt POMs (grey and blue) were pretty stanky the first time I opened their jar - just a little stanky now. I forgot who suggested it to me, but taping a bit of dryer sheet to the inside of the lid helps.
I’m a huge fan of these switches. Let me know what you think! I lubed the stems with 205 and added durock switch films.
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Been playing with a couple. They sound pretty good stock. I didn’t expect them to be slightly deeper than black inks. Pretty minimal stem wobble and barely any housing wobble. Put a deskey film on one and really like how it sounds. There’s a ticking sound on the majority of my switches when I push the stem south or tap the edge of a keycap. Subtle but annoying once you hear it. Lubing the top housing fixed that. Do your switches have that? Video example here: Problems with the Epsilon switches?! Epsilon vs. Ink black V2s - YouTube
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strange. No, mine don’t tick. They are lubed, however, so I’m not sure if it’s lube or a batch thing. I bought mine in the first batch from Prevail. And yes, I love the deep pitch they have.
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I have them on a board with a couple black inks and Everglide aqua kings to compare and the epsilons seem to have all the characteristic I love from both combined into one. Super smooth, minimal wobble and a satisfying deep sound on bottom out with a crisp bounce back. The springs feel interesting and snappy although I’m wishing they were a bit lighter. Actually looking forward to lubing and filming all these.
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Kailh switches from AliExpress arrived today, Both linear and clicky variants.
Those are a bit special 
Yes, both are optical as I’d like in a future project to mess with them.
They don’t have any contact leaves that adds to the friction of normal switches, so they are surprisingly smooth out of the box, once lubed I guess they’d become very nice to type on.
The nice thing with these optical switches are also the possibility to take parts of normal Kailh switches:
- springs.
- click bars.
- top case (I guess)
- stems ? (probably not, must have to check that).
The interchangability looks to be on par or even greater with Gateron opticals, that I also ordered.
Can’t wait to receive them
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Still hoping that Optical Future from Swishy pans out
From Prevail’s page for them,
“These switches have a full nylon housing*, POM linear stem and 58.5g stainless steel spring.”
" **Nylon housing is a different type of nylon compared to their other offerings, to keep the price down. Sound & performance may differ from other full nylon housings.*"
Sounds like JWK is using the cheapest nylon they can get for these TBH. Would makes sense with them not willing to put their proper name on it. Kinda a shame, but I’ll stick with Gat Pro yellows for my budget switch for now.
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