What is your favorite quiet alps board? I love the Granite even more than the MQP...
I don't have
that many keyboards (dozens, not hundreds). I don't have a cream (damped) keyboard of any kind, so I have no comparisons to make. I'm not a huge fan of quiet keyboards anyway — I would have preferred Matias to make a Quiet Pro, Tactile Pro (undamped tactile) and Click Pro (damped clicky).
Is there really a difference between Salmon and Orange Alps? At the DT keyboard party this summer, I put a Apple keyboard with Salmon Alps next to another Apple keyboard with Orange Alps and tried to tell if there was a difference, but I couldn't feel any.
In 1994, the Alps catalogue listed black and green tactile; the latter is shown with (and I've not seen this) a "force diagram ... close to that of menbrane switch". [Sandy] Green tactile has never been confirmed, but there's an Overclockers UK forum topic with a photo depicting Alps switches, including a green one with apparently no LED cutout, which implies that it is this mystery SKCMAT tactile. I don't especially want to join another forum just to speak to the guy ... I hate leaving dead users lying around on other forums.
According to MouseFan, orange, salmon and black were all sold at the same time for several years, though orange was introduced a year early (without a logo) and salmon and orange ended production long before black. We know black is different (the force curve has been measured to match exactly how it feels), but the orange/salmon difference is not known — Silencium did not measure every colour. Sandy suggests that the M0116 I had—with quite stiff switches—could have been in bad condition, i.e. salmon should be closer to orange, while the orange that I have feels similar to a Matias switch (I forget if those are 60, 65 or 70 gf). I am not sure — it was visibly close to NIB, inside and out, spotlessly clean.
However, the definition of "orange" is not precise. For example, orange was originally grey switchplate, no logo (alps.tw's example). Then long white switchplate, without logo (the one I got from MrInterface). Then, the logo was added (sandy's), and finally I presume it became short white switchplate accordingly as with salmon, white and black. Since blue and white differ, orange could have experienced similar changes in feel throughout its revisions.
There's a lot of confusion remaining. For example, Alps also sold "taxi yellow" linear switches. Not all the known switches have pages up on the wiki yet.
This is why I want to see photos of Alps keyboards from everyone, so that we can get a better idea of what was sold and when.
