Monterey K2AX - Matroshka of Surprises

[VelonicV]

Recently, I purchased a "well loved" Monterey K2AX off of eBay for a decent price on an impulse, with the prospect of it hopefully containing SKCM Blues that I could flip for a quick buck.

Some of the keys are yellowed, and nearly all alphanumeric keys have a shine to them, clearly showing it was used heavily before being sold, but the overall build quality of the board is very good, and the thing is a weighty beast. Now, if the switches in it were Blues and clean, I might be in luck.



Sadly... It was not meant to be.

The switches ended up being something that I knew might show up, but I was hoping I might luck out on avoiding:



Mitsumi miniature mechanicals: a switch I have never tried but have not heard great things about, particularly when they're well used and/or dirty and they turn bindy and scratchy. These ones specifically are the white, tactile, Cherry mount version.

It was a bit sad to see, but at least I now had a board with these switches in them for my collection that I could bring out when I have friends over and watch them try to type through the binding in agony as I laugh at their misery.

However...

As I tested it out, I didn't feel any binding. Actually, none of the keys experienced it, nor did I feel anything close to scratchiness while using them.

Additionally, they actually felt really, REALLY nice. Maybe it just triggered my tactile-loving monkey brain, but the feel in my opinion is really nice. Really smooth, medium stiffness, with a rounded tactility. Reminds me of a smoother, more rounded SMK 2nd Gen tactile with a longer travel distance. The feeling honestly shocked me compared to what I expected.

As the cherry on top, plugging it in revealed that all the keys work and function! Woot woot! A great addition to my collection then.

Has anyone else experienced this before? Do all these switches feel like this, and what I've heard has been hogwash? Is it the way they happen to be mounted in this keyboard specifically?

Could it be because these switches in particular potentially use a vertical spring instead of the typical horizontal one, and generate the tactility in a more traditional way? Is it due to their heavy use in a potentially relatively clean environment (since there's little to no dust on the plate from what I saw)?

[PlacaFromHell]

I don't have any keyboard with that switches, but I always suspected that pre problem is the size itself, they are so tiny that when you press a key just a tiny bit off-center the slider may get stuck and can't mechanically convert the actual diagonal force into linear. Just imagine that you have a normal switch, like a Cherry MX for example and you put a 4U keycap, it will bind as fuck. That explain why the stabilized keycaps feel nice. Maybe because your switches are super clean they are smooth enough to not bind.

[VelonicV]

I don't have any keyboard with that switches, but I always suspected that pre problem is the size itself, they are so tiny that when you press a key just a tiny bit off-center the slider may get stuck and can't mechanically convert the actual diagonal force into linear. Just imagine that you have a normal switch, like a Cherry MX for example and you put a 4U keycap, it will bind as fuck. That explain why the stabilized keycaps feel nice. Maybe because your switches are super clean they are smooth enough to not bind.

Yeah, that could be it.

Actually, after more testing, I did start to notice a bit of a difference in feeling between the alpha keys and the numeric/F keys, where the numeric/F keys feel more stiff when pressed on the edges. Still not binding in any sense of the word, but definitely different than alpha keys, in particular the tilda key.

Based on the level of shine on the keycaps, I do think that, weirdly enough, maybe the heavy use of the switches but their relatively clean state has made them somehow less stiff and better overall? Maybe the switches now have more play in them, reducing the chance of stiffness and binding, somehow?

It could also be their mounting position or the profile of the keycaps, although switching the keycaps around didn't do much to change the feeling one way or another.