SIIG Minitouch w/ Hua Jie Clicky Alps Clones

[russell2937]

I recently bought a near pristine SIIG Minitouch with these switches. I was really hoping for Monterey Blues as I've really wanted a keyboard with these switches for a while. The seller was unresponsive so I just went for it, and, obviously, I didn't get what I was hoping for. I'm fairly new to this whole keyboard thing and I'm curious, just how bad are these compared to genuine Alps / SMK Blues? The only comparison I have is my Model M and I honestly prefer the Hua Jies to the membrane buckling springs.

[Kevadu]

Wow, really?  I made the same mistake myself once and honestly I would rank those switches as some of the worst I have ever used...

The feel isn't that bad, though definitely on the stiff side.  My real problem was so much chattering that typing on that keyboard was effectively impossible.  Sometimes pressing a key would produce the given character 2 or 3 times...sometimes pressing a key wouldn't produce the character at all.  I had to constantly backspace to fix 'typos' that weren't my fault at all except the error rate was so high odds our there would be more problems generated while you're trying to fix the old ones.  Occasionally I would press and release a key and it would just continue to register continuously as if I was holding the key down.  The slider came back up though so it wasn't physically stuck or anything...which is kind of worse in a way.  How do you even fix that?

I actually went through the incredibly tedious exercise of replacing all the switches with new Matias switches hoping I would at least get a usable board out of it.  I guess it did help...it went from being the worst keyboard I have ever used in my life to merely being complete ****.  Honestly I think part of the problem isn't the switches but rather the PCB.  While Matias switches aren't immune to chattering either (actually all Alps switches can have this problem), they shouldn't be that bad.

Still my conclusion in the end was that the Minitouch just wasn't good enough to justify spending even more time and money on trying to improve.  Cut your losses and run.  It's crap.