White Alps Question

[hellothere]

I recently bought a rebadged Chicony 5161c/5162c. There's a 1988 Chicony copyright and the word "Alps" (not the cool cursive logo) stamped on the PCB. It has white Alps switches and there are slits in the top housing, which I verified by disassembling a switch. No logo on the switch top housing.

I've seen a little bit of discussion on black Alps and that the "pine" (with slits) version is superior to the "bamboo" (without slits) version, all other things being equal. Is that the case with the white Alps? If so, in what way are the pine Alps better?

[ZedTheMan]

Pine alps are generally less clunky and more refined feeling. Somewhere along the line, whether it be due to change in slits or other harder to see changes, the later bamboo alps feel less refined than pine ones. The ones in the chicony, assuming they are in good condition, should additionally be potentially better than other pine white alps due to being early enough to not have a top logo.

Alps are weird and there are many difficult to see and unseen changes throughout their production lifetimes.
The slits are just one of the more physically apparent ones.

[hellothere]

That's a great description, ZedTheMan. Thanks very much.

After having several Alps clone keyboards pass through my hands, I recently bought three true Alps keyboards: the Chicony, an AEK II with cream damped, and a Cumulus terminal board with SKCL yellow (all keys have the LED cutout).

On the Cumulus and the Chicony, I'm probably going to do a "deep clean" and I have to replace a couple switches on each. The AEK is absolutely beautiful and I just need to start testing it.

[Polecat]

Zed's comments agree with what I've found. I have dozens of white Alps keyboards that I've collected over several decades, which give a good sampling of the changes. They were definitely not all created equal, and generally the later ones sound and feel inferior (that's an opinion) to the earlier ones, and have more issues with reliability and useful life (another opinion).

Around mid-1989 Alps changed the slider color on the "clicky" SKCM switches from blue to white. It may or may not have been a simple chronological change. More than one factory may be involved. The very early white Alps switches had unbranded upper housings like the blues. And were likely factory lubed, again like blues. At some point the ALPS legend was added to the upper housings, and changes were made to the internal parts and the lube eliminated. Later the slots were removed from the housings. The exact details of these changes will hopefully come to light. A crackpot theory of mine is that the mold numbers might help us understand these changes, but that may turn out not to be true.

In any case, the early white "Pine" Alps switches with unbranded upper housings are very similar to blue Alps, which of course have become quite expensive and scarce. I don't have a Chicony example of unbranded whites (congrats!), but on my Focus FK-2001, Northgate gold label 102, and Monterey K102 keyboards, of which I have examples with both switches, I would not be able to tell the difference between blues and unbranded whites without pulling a cap. And I would challenge anyone to do so!

[Polecat]

In hindsight I should have also mentioned the later unbranded "white Alps" switches that I've found in a few Datacomp keyboards from around 1992. These have the two long mounting tabs found on Alps switches, rather than the four small tabs found on many or most clones. But they do not have any Alps ID on either the upper or lower housing. (blues and early unbranded whites have an Alps logo on the lower housing...) You'll need to unsolder one from the board, of course, to check the lower housings. Inside you'll find a switchplate as used in complicated SKCM Alps, rather than the loose contacts found in simplified Alps and clones. The upper right ("NE") mold markings on these have a very low numeric prefix, unlike branded white Alps from the same period which have much higher, two digit numbers. Nobody seems to know for sure if these switches were made by Alps (second factory?), or by Forward or Datacomp, possibly with old Alps tooling? Just mentioning this in case your Chicony is from 1992 or so, rather than 1989.