Aristotle Yellow … or Cherry

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Something weird — I got some MX Silent Black switches today, with old-style shells, and the underside is (notwithstanding the lack of pins) virtually identical to the switch on the left here:



There's just one small problem: the switch on the left is "FAKE!". The one on the right is real Cherry.

So either my Silent Black switches are more fakes, or Cherry really do have moulds matching the "fakes". I need to go in search of more photos showing the bottoms of switches to verify this.

We already have good evidence that [wiki]Simplified Alps Type III[/wiki] uses real Alps parts, and it seems that [wiki]Aristotle Yellow[/wiki] does, too. It seems that yellow sliders are replacements, so maybe these also used shells instead of complete switches. (There's still that matter of the missing pink glow from the inside of the movable contact.)

Michael Schmid at Cherry did subsequently find that Cherry MX Yellow is real, and Blaise (wherever he is) has the photos of it, so maybe that's why Asia went with yellow. I need to pester him again about this.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Something else — the poorly-moulded Cherry logo in Aristotle Yellow is also not an indicator of anything: I have an MX Click Clear (probably MX White, I need to check sometime) with exactly the same poorly-moulded logo. I need to check where it came from, but I assume it's real (it's from a typewriter I guess as it has wires soldered to it).

[hansichen]

That's some interesting research, hopefully cherry can help us.

The mx click switch could be from old triumph Adler typewriters, eg the Gabriele 7007l has such a soldered switch inside of the case.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I got it from hypkx; I need to dig out the details. The question is whether the Aristotle top shell has the Cherry mould number inside, which I'll check one day when I find where I put the switches. They can't be too hard to find, I only have 3000 switches at the moment.

[UncleFan]

Hello. Daniel. That left switch shell's diode logo is true. I have many Cherry switches using that logo.but I don't remember which one is. It doesn't mean it is fake.
I have always believe that Cherry had produced MX YELLOW. But some photo of Aristotle yellow is really fake! Its key-stem and top cover is sufficient evidence. And that Cherry LOGO also can't prove it is fake.
Look these photo:

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I think: Someone had order MX Yellow from Cherry. And then, the other one had clone it.
Did Michael had found out the record of MX YELLOW?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

cherry-jade's Chicony keyboard contained several different yellow switches. I bought 10 switches via AliExpress, and I did not get all the different types. (If I had bought directly from cherry-jade, then I could have asked for some of each time.) Michael also bought his from AliExpress.

The problem is that Michael never showed me what he actually bought. So when he said that the switch shells are real Cherry, I don't know which type he was looking at. I tried repeatedly to get it through his skull that there were multiple types, but he refused to listen (he was too busy screaming "FAKE!" in the Cherry blog to actually treat this seriously), so I'm at a loss to know what he's got. I know I didn't get all the different types, so he could have anything. I can't use his findings to describe what I have, as they may be different.

All I know is that the sliders in his and mine are all fake. The slider is the part that makes them yellow, which is why we know that they're not MX Yellow. They seem to be made from a mixture of real and clone parts, and nobody knows why.

But yes, the "bad" logo is indeed real. At some point I'll update the wiki accordingly — it's on my long list of stuff to do.