today the G80-1000s I bought from Ascaii for the springs arrived, and I immediately started harvesting springs, and modding. The Keyboards I bought had MX Blues, as I wanted to perform a Ghetto Red mod on my G80-2551 (yup, that's right: no more vintage Blacks. But don't worry I've kept the springs
). So I was busy for the whole afternoon, opening switches, and exchanging springs. Most keys were pretty easy, but the function keys on my 2551 took very long, as they are Plate Mounted in contrary to the other keys which are PCB mounted. (I noticed that my soldering skills are as good as I remembered them, but my desoldering skills definitely need training) While modding I noticed some interesting things, which I never read about. At first: some of the keys on the G80-2551 aren't doubleshot apparently. (The ”Datenfreigabe“ key e.g.) Second: the Enter key and the function keys use some springs which are different from the other MX Black springs. They were a little more stiff (nearly unnoticable without using a rip-o-meter) and looked a little copperish. (see picture. The left one is an ordinary "Black" spring. The right one is a "Grey" spring from the space key on this keyboard. The one in the middle is the one in question)
While doing the mod I remembered somebody on geekhack talking about a "Ghetto Brown" mod, where he glued the moving, white part of a blue stem, so it wouldn't click. As I'm not really into blues, I just tried it out of curiosity (and because my mother wants a keyboard with browns...) and was surprised. The resulting switch didn't feel like a brown at all. Where a brown switch feels like a gritty linear, this ”Ghetto Brown“ feels more like a worn down, gritty ergoclear. Not really my taste, but maybe someone is interested in this. The only problem I see with these is, that the small gap between the blue and clear part of the stem gives it an additional bump.
Well, and then something else arrived at my door: an Alcatel/Acer KB-101A I bought on ebay.
I didn't really expect much from it, and I only paid like 10€ shipped, but the keyboard was in a pretty good condition (only some scratches on the edges) and the Switches feel absolutely amazing. I never really understood how to distinguish complicated, simplified or whatever ALPS switches there are, but to me with my limited knowledge they look like real complicated white clicky ALPS.
Whatever, but these switches are really great. Until now I never really cared about ALPS switches, but only about Cherry, but now it changed. These switches feel like a mixture between Ergoclears, Blues and Buckling Spring. They have a strong tactile bump with a crisp activation point, and a click that sounds much less plasticky than the one of Blues. I really fell in love with these little things.
Now i'm typing on my ghetto red G80-2551, and feel pretty content.
RC-1140
