What do I do with 4 broken Matias Quiet Pros?

[glaurung]

Two years ago I bought a Matias Quiet Pro (mac edition). After a month or so, one of the keys went dead. I contacted Matias and learned that they'd had a problem with their Chinese supplier providing not to spec keyswitches. They sent me a new keyboard, no questions asked, no need to send in the old board. The new board worked for a few months, and then one of the keys died. (and no I was not typing on them nonstop - just web surfing and occasional blog post/email writing).

RInse and repeat over the 1 year warranty period. They never were able to provide me with a keyboard that actually lasted more than a few months of use before one of the keys (usually down arrow, sometimes backspace) went kaput. When the latest replacement died after the warranty expired in early 2017, I knew that I would never buy a Matias product again. I also at that point had four (!) nearly new keyboards in their boxes, each and every one with at least one dead key.

Fast forward a year and it's time to spring clean. Is there anyone who might want the damn things for parts or something (and how much might they be worth), or should I just recycle them?

eta: forgot to say, they are full size with number pad.

[Myoth]

some members might want to try these switches, other would like to mod the shit out of them, some will just harvest them ... but you can be sure that they'd get used !

[green-squid]

Take them apart, take out the shitty switches and put in better ones! You can sell the keycaps from the other 3.

[fohat]

Take them apart, take out the shitty switches and put in better ones! You can sell the keycaps from the other 3.

That would be my advice, more or less: Keep one, harvest enough switches to make 3 of the 4 work properly, plus a small handful of spares to keep yours running in the future, sell 2 "as-is" (with 3-4 spare switches each), and sell the picked-over carcass for the price of a set of Alps key caps (not a trivial thing of itself) because somebody may well want to use it as a transplant chassis for a project of their own.

[snacksthecat]

Make them ironically loud

[Elrick]

Take them apart, take out the shitty switches and put in better ones! You can sell the keycaps from the other 3.

That was one of the reasons why I never bought his keyboards due to all the talk that went around with his dodgy switches that HE used.

Have no idea if he actually fixed the issue but for me personally, would rather trust OLD time keyboards instead of wasting any money on his current keyboards.

Funny how it's far better to buy the older stuff and use it, rather than to buy any newly produced gear. No wonder this place (DT) rocks, when it comes to promoting decent older gear that still works today .

[green-squid]

Elrick, I get what you're saying, but Matias are the only ones besides those APC clone ones that are still making new Alps switches. The old Alps keyboards and switches are getting more and more scarce and expensive (look at blue alps!). I think we should keep that in mind. This old gear is great, but we can only rely on it for so long.

[glaurung]

Funny how it's far better to buy the older stuff and use it, rather than to buy any newly produced gear. No wonder this place (DT) rocks, when it comes to promoting decent older gear that still works today .

Yeah, that's why I am not really interested in hacking or modding these Matias keyboards myself. Besides needing time for more worthwhile things, I have decided that if, as all the review sites claim, Matias is the best currently made quiet keyboard available, then to heck with it, I'll just go back to old keyboards built in the days when you could buy a keyboard and use it until you wore holes in the keys without it ever encountering a hardware issue.

[Elrick]

I'll just go back to old keyboards built in the days when you could buy a keyboard and use it until you wore holes in the keys without it ever encountering a hardware issue.

Now you see the LIGHT Brother. Welcome to the Club .

[TicTocTom]

I'm really happy with my Matias tactile pro. Two months. Touch wood.

[Darkshado]

Did you try contacting Matias given your situation? Maybe they sorted out their quality control issues and would be willing to send another board out. Also, does Ontario have a "legal warranty" on consumer goods? (i.e. widgets you buy are supposed to last a "reasonable" amount of time under normal use, which for a mechanical keyboard is surely longer than a year)

Otherwise I'm not sure how much these boards should be worth, given the uncertain durability. If you're decided on just recycling them, I guess I (and probably a few others here) could take them off your hands for shipping, part one out, fix up the others and pass them on to a good home.