Tbh I have only really tried MX switches, of those black is my favourite. I was thinking gateron blacks, but if you have any suggestions I would appreciate it.
Still a little lost on how to get hold of things, also is that your board in your footer? looks awesome
I'm not big on linears myself, so others would probably be better at helping if you posted in
the Keyboards section about it. It has been a while since I have compared MX black with Gateron black, but in general, Gateron switches seem pretty nice and smooth to me for your average no-frills MX clone. I would certainly take anything in their line over the MX equivalent and have pondered endlessly whether or not I should stop being lazy and swap the MX reds in my Corsair K70 with Gateron yellow for gaming duty. If you're looking for extreme smoothness, even without lubrication (which I don't do myself) you may want to look into optical switches as well. They have no contacts to rub against each other, so they're said to be
very smooth right out of the gate.
Yes, if you mean the one in my profile picture, it is an industrial gray Model F77 reproduction. It is the brainchild of our very own
Ellipse. As Bjerrk mentioned, capacitive buckling spring is in no way comparable to anything in the MX family. They're smooth, crisp (but often pingy) clicky switches straight out of the early 80s. It is a very simple (outside of the capacitive part) mechanism in which there are two capacitive pads on the PCB. A coil spring inside of a plastic barrel is depressed by the cap until the spring buckles, kicking out a flipper that changes the capacitance between those two pads to register a key press. This makes for a deceptively small tactile event, as the spring pressure builds sharply just before it buckles cleanly. I stole a side-by-side GIF image of it next to MX blue:
Ellipse sells the cases as spares for $100 if you like it, you could try to design an MX-compatible plate for it and try your hand at handwiring a keyboard matrix or something. I know I have been thinking of trying to make an Alps plate for it, but I have never even done the research necessary to start. They're
really thick zinc, and the powder coating is quite nice.