Sweet! You've got yourself an alps keyboard. These keyboards are loved by many due to their light, lubed and damp click. Sadly, they're very rare and require a high amount of maintenance.
Sweet! You've got yourself an alps keyboard. These keyboards are loved by many due to their light, lubed and damp click. Sadly, they're very rare and require a high amount of maintenance.
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What do you mean rare these can be bought for 40 dollars shipped. And no they don't need high amount of maintenance you only need to have a clean desk or put a cover on top if you want to keep them clean.
the mystery and enigma of the Alps switch continues to be muddled in confusion to this day.
You can't buy alps switches new (save for some of the later models, and clones), hence the "rarity", in order to experience genuine alps switches youd have to buy a vintage board. To those that have just entered the mech community, the idea of buying a used board may seem farfetched. I'm assuming this is what was meant by "rare" although, like OP just stated, he got this for $40 bucks shipped. Cream damped alps are very common. Amber alps on the other hand, were only ever available on one keyboard.
As far as "high maintenance", yes, technically, if you like to open your keyboards up and shovel sand into them, alps switches can deteriorate and feel very ****ty, and its arguable whether or not extreme methods such as ultrasonic cleaning can restore a worn alps switch to that of one brand new. but if you keep your keyboard on your desk, use canned air every now and then, then this switch is no more high maintenance than other switches. a new alps board and a new cherry board have similar lifetime expectancies, roughly 20 million keystrokes. Although newer cherry switches are rated at 50 million. You'd be hard pressed to ever wear one out.
