Don't get me wrong—I love clickety, clackety keyboards as much as anyone. But to my ears, some boards are
too clacky. There's nothing particularly "mechanical" about the slap of plastic on plastic—and when there's too much of that, it can drown out the nice, deeper sound of keys resonating on and in the case (a sound I'd describe as more "clock-y", though the vocabulary quickly breaks down here).
There's an easy way to take the edge off of the sound of stock MX-style switches, using craft foam. It's cheap, quick 'n' easy.
EDIT: If you're
padding a lighted board (and, probably, like, 95% of you are), please be sure to see my subsequent post here,
"Making pads LED-compatible", before you start.
You'll need:
• One sheet of 2mm craft foam. It looks like this (click images to zoom in):
...and you can get it at most dollar stores. For about a dollar.
• A ruler, a pen, and some good scissors
• A single-hole paper punch. For those of you born after the Printed Age, they look like this:
You can usually find them at dollar stores too. (If yours has a little hinged punch-out catcher at the bottom, like the one in the photo, remove it—it should pull right off. It may be handy when punching paper, but with foam it's just a nuisance.)
So all told, this should cost you only a few bucks. (Sorry to disappoint you guys who spend great gobs of dough on keyboard stuff, BTW—LOL)
Step 1: Mark off a couple of 1/2-inch rows along one edge of the foam. For regular-size (1x) keys, you'll be cutting pads that are 1/2" square—so add a small mark at the
centre of each one, where you'll punch its hole.
Here, you can see I've drawn the horizontal rows; then I've made marks 1/2" apart, starting at 1/4" from the left, where the centre of the first pad will be:
You'll notice I've used orange foam to honour GH.
Step 2: Punch a hole at each small mark, centred in the row.
You don't need to be exact; just do the best you can. If you punch too off-centre, just don't use that pad... You should have a lot more foam than you need.
Step 3: Make a small cut
between each hole, up to the next row line. (I do it this way—rather than marking the places where I'll cut—because it makes it easier to cut evenly between the holes.) Then cut out the row, horizontally, and separate the pads.
Whee! It looks like a party.
Step 4: Put a pad in each of your 1x keys. Use two fingers to push it a bit down on the post so it'll stay on till you put the key back.
Step "whatever", because I don't know where else to put it: For
wider keys, measure the distance
between the outer (stab) stems, mark off a 1/2"-tall piece of foam to that width, punch it in the centre, and cut it out... You get the idea.
Don't get all OCD (as if—LOL!). None of this needs to be exact. A 1/2"-wide piece would probably work too—but as long as you're doing 'em, why not?
For the spacebar, I put a 1x pad on each outer post, and cut a 1" pad for the centre one... You don't need anything wider there.
(It's not obvious in the photo—but because this spacebar was highly profiled, I trimmed just a bit off the side of each pad where it met the slanted side of the bar, so it'd fit down flat.)
Aaand... you're done! Well, as soon as you put your keys back. Now enjoy your classy (but still clickety) new sound.
The foam is surprisingly durable—I've had some in keebs for years and it's still going. And because it compresses, it doesn't resist and bounce around like rubber O-rings, nor does it reduce key travel very much.
Here's a video to give you an idea how it sounds. (I've used a board with short-travel "speed" switches, so you can see how little key travel is affected.)
If you're not sure whether you'll like the new sound on a particular board, just do a few keys and compare.
And I probably shouldn't have to say this, guys... But if you prefer full-on bright clackity sounds, please don't post negative comments here—just don't do the mod, and everyone'll be happy.
Cheers!