Bad Gateron / EnjoyPBT keycap quality

[scottc]

So recently I had an idea: I'd use my crappy Cherry MY keyboards as display cases for all of my various very nice keycap sets. I started with my blank two-tone beige Gateron PBT blanks. While gently pushing a keycap on to the ASD row, I hear a faint but terrifying cracking sound. The stem has broken. ARGH! I assume it's because of crappy old Cherry MY switches being too tight and forget about it, thinking I should have enough spares since I'll never use the numpad keys.

Fast forward to this morning. I've assembled a Phantom with Gateron black MX clone switches. It's currently wearing some Cherry dyesubs, but those are sticking due to the Gateron switch top molds so I decide to swap over to my trusty blank Gateron PBT keycaps. Gateron manufactures both the switches and keycaps so they should work perfectly, right? Wrong. After about 30 caps in, I hear the dreaded sound: crack. Another keycap has broken.

Has anyone else had the same quality issues with Gateron/EnjoyPBT caps? While I really hate to say it, I'm definitely going to be avoiding them in the future. I know based on many, many reports that Gateron's switch QC leaves a lot to be desired, but it seems like it might apply to the caps too.

This is a warning to anyone who wants to buy Gateron caps: don't! My advice: just use original thick Cherries, even if they're lasered, and spare yourself the disappointment!

[lootbag]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck, I have never seen something like this happen.
Should I be worried if I am joining the Enjoypbt groupbuy?
However, I have not paid yet haha.

[scottc]

While I don't want to talk badly about a GB in progress, you might want to be careful. This is from the first batch so it's possible that Gateron have stepped up their quality in this time, but I don't know. If something similar to this happened to a dyesub set you'd be in trouble, you can't swap them around like blanks...

[lootbag]

Yeah I have no experience with Gateron switches or keycaps.
I've only ever used OG Cherry and recently just purchased my first GMK set.
Really hope yours is an isolated case.

[Muirium]

Deeply concerning. I've literally never had a single cap snap like that in all the thousands of installations I've done the last few years. And these were new!

The only time I can remember when I have snapped a stem was with prototype switch adapters. And even then it was just a hairline crack and still useable. There was nothing proto about what you were doing here. The QC on these caps is abysmal! Selling something as broken is downright insulting to customers! Who could trust these clowns to improve?

[scottc]

I certainly wouldn't trust them to improve! And I have never broken a cap before either.

I have to say, I really doubt I'll be buying anything Gateron from now on. The tops of the switches weren't even cloned properly, causing proper Cherry caps to stick! For this Phantom, I'm going to swap on some original Cherry switch tops and only use Gaterons for throwaway projects that I don't intend to use nice caps on.

[Khers]

Seeing this and having my Gateron Blacks at home with which I am deeply dissatisfied due to their incoherent feel, I too doubt that I will buy stuff off of Gateron again...

(I have a set of black on blacks from Ivan's GB on order, so I guess I'll experience their cap quality first hand soon.)

[Muirium]

B…b…but Zealios are still good, guys, rite? They have a whole different staff of Shenzhen virgins for exclusive work on those sainted switches. They said so!

[scottc]

The only way I could get Gateron blacks to vaguely feel passable was to swap all the springs. Kind of a pain!

Mu, you know how much Zealios cost? That's 100% dedicated to making them feel good. Every one is lubed with a bespoke mixture of holy water from Lourdes and the tears of unborn children.

[Sankart]

Just wrote an exam, got home and now I see this thread.

B…b…but Zealios are still good, guys, rite?

I actually fell for those. Cancelling right now.
Good old german Cherry it is. For now and forever.

[scottc]

Uh oh, guys, I definitely didn't mean to make everyone cancel their orders...

[Sankart]

I'm pretty sure most people won't react the way I did. In fact I wasn't too eager to buy Gaterons from the start. This threads content is only the last straw. I doub't they'd actually detonate my keycaps like yours did, but I generally don't like companies who achieve low prices by low QC.
And I surely don't like companies who combine low QC with high prices.
I've been awake for about 24 hours, so excuse my english

[Madhias]

I think you have a typo in the first sentence - Cherry MY instead of MX? This thread will have a lot of traffic over time for sure...

[scottc]

You're right Madhias, thanks! Fixed.

[ramnes]

Damn scottc, why do you do that to me? I entered in the EnjoyPBT GB yesterday! Stop breaking stems!

[Prelim]

eish bad news... I would ask if you used a decent puller, but needless to say you have more experience on this than most of us here, so it's for sure a QC problem.

Either the way, it's strange not seeing more people complaining about it... but that's the same thing with the Gats switch tops: the problem is there and hasn't been resolved in the recent transparent tops or even Zelios switches, people are still using cherry/gmk caps on them and nobody complains. I guess people do like low quality material, bad QC and don't mind paying for crap @@ With so many hype, they also seem to be ashamed of telling the truth about Gateron :/

[scottc]

I didn't use a puller, didn't have a chance to - the cap broke before it even fix on the stem! It's really such a shame because I love the caps, they're far superior in feel and profile to Signature Plastics, Tai-Hao, etc etc. If I wasn't so lucky with finding original Cherry dyesubs recently I would've jumped at the EnjoyPBT dyesub GB, but now I'm glad I didn't.

I think most of it must be hype, to be honest. It's like "look, some people pay crazy prices for rare vintage Cherry stuff and we're exactly the same except cheap!" People will always get excited about cheap, good clones of really expensive gear, and rightly so. I'm typing on the Phantom right now and I have to say the switches and caps are pretty nice, but that's after breaking these three caps and swapping all of the springs with Korean things I got from Sprit a long time ago.

[Muirium]

With so many hype, they also seem to be ashamed of telling the truth about Gateron :/

Exactly!

That's so often the problem with stuff like this. Even Scott opened with an apology, asking people not to make too much of this! Perhaps I'm just a natural born trouble maker, or a grumpy old git, but I don't feel that restraint at all. I'm forever criticising the things I buy, as well as stuff like this I don't!

Groupthink is dangerous. People's silence helps sell bad shit. And China is more than willing to make it.

By the way, this kind of defect is exactly why I want us to make our own caps in Europe or America. Matteo's efforts with Chinese manufacturers are honourable, and his PBT Topre spacebars are epic, but when things like this happen it's because QC can't be done at a distance. We need our own capability. That's why I was so pleased to see Rsbseb take on the challenge. We need to do this stuff in house. For keycap nerds. By keycap nerds.

[Prelim]

wow, I thought it broke on cap removal... that's even worse then :/

Regarding the switches, I must say I do like the feel of my lubed gateron blacks (w/ cherry tops and 65g SPRiT springs), they're pretty smooth to me I also found the gaterons less whobble than cherry and a bit more silent. Besides that I think I still prefer cherry over gaterons as the overall built quality is better on Cherry. The gaterons also react in different way (due to their ~1mm higher actuation point) but even that doesn't prevent me of bottoming-out a lot on them, which doesn't happen to me with Cherry switches :/

[Khers]

[...] Regarding the switches, I must say I do like the feel of my lubed gateron blacks (w/ cherry tops and 65g SPRiT springs), they're pretty smooth to me [...]

But that's the thing! In order to make them feel coherent across the board you need to make a spring swap. I'd prefer if they were the same out of the box. If I need to open up the switches then I might as well lube them and if you add lube into the equation, I prefer some lubed Cherries.

[Prelim]

you can't compare, as the feeling will always be different than cherry switches.

I have all my boards with linear switches (lubed): modern blacks (stock or 65g spring), vintage blacks (stock or 65g spring), the gaterons blacks (65g spring) and I honestly say that in terms of smoothness the gaterons are really good... way better than modern lubed blacks and on pair with vintages ones.

[Khers]

Ok, I should clarify that I meant lubed vintage or old blacks! The new stuff is quite horrible, even when lubed, imo.

[courtesi]

This is why I'm exclusive with buckling springs.

People can talk all the crap they want about Unicomp; I'm willing to wager my 103 will outlast all your Cherry boards.

[Muirium]

Oh, that's fighting talk you've got there, laddie!

I favour IBM over Cherry, too, but we're talking about shitty clone caps here, not the originals. And I'd get a few real IBMs, if I were you, because Unicomp's not much better than these guys.

The classics will last. On both sides of the divide.

[Matt_]

"Shitty clone caps" is a bit harsh. Yeah, there are obviously QC issues on some batches (and I understand the concern when people throw $150 to get a set through a proxy) but if their products (switches & caps) were unequivocally so crappy there would have been some backlash already. That may come at a later point if those problems get more frequent.

scottc, have you contacted your seller? Perhaps it's too late for him to get you replacement caps, but you should probably let him know what happened to what he sold you anyway.

[ohaimark]

It appears that I'm in the minority -- I really enjoy stock Gateron Clears, though they are a switch without a direct Cherry equivalent.

Shame on them for those keycaps, though.

[Muirium]

@Matt. Look at the picture. Shattered, shitty caps.

And to think I pictured a triumphant parade of Cherry folk pleased to see me defend them for a change, against a fellow IBMer. Ach. I've much to learn about the land of multi hundred dollar vintage dyesubs with stems that aren't even centred right…

[flabbergast]

I had no problems like these with my set of gateron blank keycaps.
But as far as the switches go, their QC is crap, but the switches are very smooth. So one just needs to buy 25% more gateron switches than needed and weed out the problematic ones (or do a spring swap). Having tried this smoothness, I'm not really happy with genuine Cherries anymore - at least lubing required... so it's tuning the switches either way.

[scottc]

Nah, I haven't contacted the seller. Spoiler alert: it's Shadovved, the same guy doing the current GB. I don't think he cares much for DT, don't think he's got an account. Not sure I'll bother. I don't really need replacements, the ones I have are in theory fine even with the 3 broken stems because I'll never need the numpad.

[Matt_]

@Matt. Look at the picture. Shattered, shitty caps.

And to think I pictured a triumphant parade of Cherry folk pleased to see me defend them for a change, against a fellow IBMer. Ach. I've much to learn about the land of multi hundred dollar vintage dyesubs with stems that aren't even centred right…

Yeah, those particular caps are shitty, there's no denying that. But to say that all Gateron caps are "shitty clones" is a bit of a stretch — there have been several massive buys on massdrop and geekhack, and if their products were so crappy there would have been more than a handful of complaints (scottc's was not the first, but I didn't see many on Shadovved's long thread either, and people usually don't hesitate to be vocal when something's wrong).

As for the Cherry vs Gateron thing, I'm non-denominational I think it's interesting that someone brings something new when Cherry seems to rest on their laurels and grants exlucive rights of their new products to shitty manufacturers (there I go), but I'm not giving them a free pass either. It just seems a bit hasty to me to write them off entirely.