E3E,
Those Alps plate designs in the OP have a 1.25/6.25 bottom row. Because 6.25 wires are the only ones I can get for Costar stabs. If there were a source for 7u Costar stab wires, I would love to redesign the plate for 1.5/7u.
Do you think there is any case for making the plate in 6u or 7u instead of 6.25u?
Oh, derp. I should've realized that with the spacing on the HHKB-styled plate, but I didn't notice the 1.25u spacing of the mods. Well, the only arguments I can pose for 7u is that most classic Alps boards have 7u wire, and while many have Alps stabs, I've seen quite a few with Costar stabilizers too. Barring that, I'd argue that the act of buying a plate and customizing a board is far enough into the realm of DIY territory for people to bend their own wire.
Should the plates instead have support for Alps stabs and wire as opposed to Costar? What's the idea behind using Costar? AFAIK (and I could be wrong here), the plates from the Alps Party GB used Alps stab mounts.
EDIT: I just realized though. The notches on the MX plate will work just fine for Alps. I know specs say that Alps plates are thinner than MX plates, but I've had no issues on the Infinity keyboard or in the 60% universal plates I've used with Alps.
Couldn't that just be a cover-all plate design, since it uses costar as well? Er, wait... those slots are a little wider. That might be Cherry then. Jeez, sorry for the ramble in anycase.
Yeah, the MX plate would have Alps compatibility, if I redesigned the stabilizer holes to use plate mount instead of PCB mount stabs.
The Alps Party stabs were regular Alps stab holes, and stabs were sourced from Matias. I guess I should wait until I get those to decide what to do about the stabs on this one? I went with 6.25 initially, because spacebars from AT101Ws and even new keycap sets like those Tai Hao from MD include 6.25, while 7u might be harder to source. And again, the new caps use Cherry-style stab mounts, which is why I went with the Costar-style holes.
Alps is confusing, but fun.
I'm not sure if people would be happy using plate mount stabs for Cherry switches. It seems that PCB is usually preferred, but is that just because of universal layouts or is there a significant difference otherwise?
I'm down for a plate that can take both Alps and Cherry switches + Costar and Cherry stabs.
Yeah, I think waiting might be a good idea to see how the plates from Alps party turn out. If the dedicated Alps plates do get made though, I don't see much of an issue with using Alps stab mounting. The Alps party buy was very successful, so I think having similar plates available would sell well!
Does the AT101W use costar instead of Alps like the original AT101s? The nice thing about the Cherry stab mounts is that old Alps stabs can STILL be used with them, but that will either require some custom bent wire or the Matias stab wire that's supposed to work for both Alps and Costar (I think?)
Alps boards tend to have huge identity crises, from a plethora of different switch types in ONE model (lookin' at you Chicony 5161), to some boards using costar (with MX stab mount stems on the caps), some using alps w/ those cylindrical peg stabilizers, and some even using actual cherry stabs back in the day (my FAME straight up uses plate mount cherry stabs for the 7u space bar).
A very strange thing I've noticed is the stem spacing for 7u bars. DCS and vintage Alps 7u bars seem to have the same spacing, but Cherry-profile caps have a wider spacing. I ran into this issue a few times, but the first was on my FAME. I tried replacing the wire for an extra 7u wire I had and found that it was too long, while 6.25u was too short.
For my Duck build, the 7u space bars I originally tried (sourced from costar Alps boards) did not line up properly with the stabilizers, so I had to sacrifice some Cherry profile space bars to get that to work.
Anyway, this is a little irrelevant to the plates, sorry!