TIL something interesting about BOX Mute Jades.
The only bit of dampening is a tiny square pad molded into the top housing; the bar rests on that instead of the normal plastic stop.
Edit: A descriptive TL;DR of these switches might be:
- Mute Jade: a BOX tactile that uses a torsion spring to generate tactility instead of the contact leaf. Compared with traditional BOX tactiles, the tactility here is more crisp, sharp, and affirmative without generating much more noise.
The wee dampener; looks a bit like a home-made marshmallow
In fact, this switch has the exact same stem that all the other BOX clickies Iāve opened so far have - it only differs in color:
Seen here a pair of BOX clicky stems; Pink to the left, Mute Jade to the right.
Before anyone gets too excited - yes, the top housing āworksā with other clickies - no, it doesnāt make them as quiet as this one. (And while weāre at it, no, this one is not āquietā - just less loud than most clickies.) The click-bar itself on this switch is tuned not to make much of a click on the down-stroke, and is generally more mild than a normal BOX Jadeās or even BOX Pinkās.
Here you can see the stop-nub BOX clickies normally do most of their clicking against; in this switch, the dampening pad pushes the barās resting position down a bit lower, so this stop isnāt engaged when assembled.
For example - placing the dampened top housing of the BMJ on a BOX Crystal Pink does change the sound, but does not make it all that quiet. The bar is firm enough to click as it plucks across the stem ramp in both directions, but it sounds a bit less hollow and plastic-y to me when compared with a stock Pink.
In case you were wondering, Mute Jades do click at a fairly normal volume if a regular BOX housing is used instead of the stock one. The down-stroke is nearly as quiet as stock, but the up-stroke has a crisp click.
Edit: Iāve also learned that because the pad pushes the bar down, giving it a lower resting position, any BOX clicky equipped with that top housing will have a hair more pre-travel before the bar engages the stem than they did before.
So far they feel to me a bit like a BOX Brown (maybe Silent BOX Brown when it comes to bump strength), but more crisp and sharp in both the sound and feeling departments. They also have better rebound, and the sound is more consistent.
Because of how itās done, I think that consistency will last, whereas ātraditionalā BOX tactiles tend to change their sound over time as the factory lube settles, and that change tends towards a light clicking sound, which many customers have been unhappy with. Even if you like this sound ( 
), it can be challenging to coax consistency out of the leaf-and-pusher-generated clickiness.
While itās not identical, the Mute Jade makes one of my favorite BOX switch mods (tuning the tactile bits to encourage clicking) nearly redundant. I actually love it when this happens. Not only is it better for the specific-switch shopper to be able to just buy these at a non-absurd price without breaking open a few dozen switches, itās better for me as a builder to now have this readily accessible option.
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