Anyway, I called the number on that order page, and spoke with a friendly guy named Jim, I think. He said their best guess was that they were three weeks out from getting fresh batches of both the Prime and the Stellar. I asked if they would continue to use Alps switches, and he reassured me that they would stay with mechanical switches.
I was getting a little worried because more than three weeks after I posted the above, they were still out of stock. But I checked
www.cvtinc.com a few days ago, and they're selling both Avant boards again. The Stellar is now in black, but there are no photos on the site. A nagging doubt still lingers, though, as to whether they're still using Alps sliders. Maybe someone -- maybe I -- should call their sales department again to verify.
I blow hot and cold on the white Alps sliders on the Avant keyboards. Recently, I've soured on them, because of the same issues Whiskey has with his Northgate Evolution, the wobble and the bottoming out. But then there are times when I love typing on the Stellar, because it's the one keyboard I have that reminds me of typing on a manual typewriter. I wonder if the key feel of these white Alps appeals mostly to older folks who remember what it was like to type on a Remington or Hermes or Underwood. When I'm on the Avant Stellar, I imagine myself in a 1930s newsroom, and I want to don the fedora that's stashed away in the darkest corner of the closet.