A brief reflection and look at how far our community has come since joining. I’ve been in the mechanical keyboard hobby for a very long time. It started as a high school student’s search for a keyboard for writing novels back in the 2008-2009 school year. I thought I wanted to be an author and I felt I needed a keyboard that I could sit down to at my desk and just write. After researching, joining forums, and saving money, I made my first purchase in the hobby, a blank black Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional 2. I still own this keyboard and while it is heavily modded now, it remains one of my all-time favorites. My HHKB Pro2 with MitchCapped Accents Many people would have stopped there, but keyboards became a hobby. I enjoyed learning about them, and early on, I enjoyed hunting for them in thrift shops. I would dig through bins at Goodwill and Salvation Army while popping keycaps off with paperclips looking for mechanical switches. I searched for a birthday Model M...
May 7, 2024
Believe it or not, that simple introduction summarizes how the vast majority of clicky style mechanical keyboard switches out there right now operate. As you dig further into the depths about clicky switches though, you’ll likely encounter other niche styles such as snap springs, Alps-style click plates, Aristotle-style mechanisms, or any other number of niche designs which aren’t the most supported in the modern day. Regardless of whether or not you stick to the high-level stuff or get down into the nitty gritty details, if you’re interested in using clicky switches you absolutely must experiment. No two clicky switches sound exactly the same, and finding the sound your heart desires will take a few rounds of iteration. In that quest for the perfect clicky switch, though, it may help you do some more reading up to know what to look for, like my articles here on Drop on ‘Switch Marketing Terms’ and ‘The Who’s Who of Switch Manufacturers’.