This all happened inadvertently, but now I can do the keyboardists dream head-to-head review. Give me some time and I'll write up a professional review of the three switches and put it on my blog, and I'll post it here as well. I'll go the nine - audio clips of typing and close ups of the switches. God, this is going to be fun!
Now, on to the painting thing ... I am a keyboard watcher, and I have been a professional writer for years, so I am good at typing but it is just a safety mechanism in my head. So I painted the keys on my favorite keyboard at the time, this one, to take that away from myself. The funny thing is, even with the blank keys, I still type faster when I look down. It's a hard one to break, but it doesn't hurt anything, so whatever.
I used glossy cream white car paint on the keys, two coats, and I used camo paint that hunters and rednecks use on their guns and cars (respectively) for the case because it adds a little texture to the finish. To be fair, I taped off the Apple logo. That big key at the top brings up the shut-down menu in Mac and Windows. The finish is really nice looking and it feels good, and I just knew the colors I wanted from the start, so I don't know how I came up with the scheme. I just thought it would look nice and I still like it.
This model, the M0116, is really easy to take apart. There are only three phillips head screws on the bottom, and the circuit board just slides into some grooves.
I do like this keyboard, which I call my Axe in a little ode to black jazz musicians from way back in the day, quite a bit. I have another keyboard from this era, but it is a year older and it shipped with the Apple II GS, and that was the one that started this all for me. I got it and just loved it, and now it is my least favorite one because of the shape of the keys. It's in that pic I posted of my collection, it looks like this one but has a narrower footprint. I painted those keys too.