Believe it or not, I have sold my Unicomp Ultraclassic because I was expecting something much much better. For years I've believed that the rude feeling and sound of the buckling springs on my old IBM Model M was because my unit was old and worn out. Now I've found that I was very wrong. These switches feel the same when brand new. You have to smash the keyboard all the time. The switches perform well, and the strong tactility is there, but they do not feel fine for me. It's like typing on something rusty and old or in some kind of military device. It demands too much strength to type and you have to bottom out all the time. In my opinion it's the complete opposite to elegance. Maybe a very early Model M, which is supposed to be better built, feels nicer, but I not in the mood to find out.
Apart from this, the Unicomp quality is far from being acceptable. The case creaks when you lay your hands on the keyboard (very poor assembly), some of the legends are not in the correct vertical position, others are in the wrong horizontal position, the keycaps have lots of defects on their edges and fronts, the edges of the plastic case can almost cut your skin, etc. All this should not affect the typing experience. The big problem is that this bad quality of moulding and assembly in general also affects the functioning of the keyboard. I had to remove the spacebar and cut some excess of plastic on the inserts of the stabs, because they were making that key feel mushy. Other keys felt mushy as well, especially the long ones. Some small keys were scratchy as hell and you can hear a terrible spring noise when pressing them slowly. I found out that again, it's a problem with plastics, because changing the inner part of the keycaps solved the problem on some of the affected keys. In summary, a complete disappointment.
And believe it or not, I have ordered another Leopold FC980M. This time it's with blacks and again from Mykeyboard.eu. By the way, amazing store, very recommendable, great attention, no problem with returns, very kind to help you, very quick shipment... 10/10. After my so so experience with reds, I think blacks are the switches for me: linear and strong enough to allow me to type softly without bottoming out. That's the way I like to type with my cheap Tesoro Durandal and I love it. I hope the switches on the Leopold are not very scratchy. If they are, I will live it with and I will expect them to improve over time. The quality of this keyboard, compared to the Unicomp is day and night. I also missed its layout. The matt keycaps felt a bit strange when I tried them before, but maybe that's because I'm very used to type on ABS, which are already very soft and almost shiny in my Tesoro. As regard my problems with blank legends, I am willing to accept the challenge to learn to type without having to look at my keyboard at all. It will be hard, but I think I will make it. I just need to practice a lot with my right hand. So, I'll follow your advice and improve my accuracy and will not blame the keyboard instead.
