Ok, this is the full story: I am getting these switches ready for a quefrency rev2 build, so I put together the left side plate kit to use as a test bed for the switches. It vibrates pretty easily without a PCB to anchor and dampen all the switches, but I put rubber feet on the bottom, and kept it on a deskmat. While checking for noise, I gripped it with my left hand while pressing keys, and that made a big difference and isolated the noises. Unfortunately, I had to hold my camera for the videos, so in those it is un-dampened. In a finished board, these switches are all much quieter. However, comparison is what I'm going for here, so it's fine.
Silent alpacas are wonderfully smooth--I don't want this to paint a picture that they are somehow sub-par. I have just been spoiled by how quiet my recent batch of gateron black inks are, and so hearing any extra spring or metallic noise coming from the alpacas was something I wanted to get rid of if I could. I had 3 alpacas already lubed and filmed with 205g0, so I started by comparing their noise to a stock gat black ink:
Ignoring the loud clack of the black ink, the press-down and let-up is basically silent. By comparison, the silent alpacas have a fair amount of spring (or leaf?) noise. I took one of the silent alpacas apart and compared its internals to a gateron silent black ink, which also has a quieter press. Here's how the stems look side by side:
They are almost identical, and the housings are even more exactly the same from what I can see. Interestingly, the silent alpacas look like their dampening pad is sort of a gasket running all the way around the rail, whereas the silent black ink just has pads sticking out of the top and bottom of the rail. They both have about the same hardness on botttom-out. The only difference I feel is in spring or leaf noise, and since I can see no difference in the spring, pole, housing or leaf between the two, it must just be due to fitment tolerances or materials.
Next, I lubed the crap out of the silent alpaca with 205g0. To be clear, I didn't put thick layers on, I kept it light everywhere; but I put it in many places. I re-lubed the spring, outside and inside, and the bottom housing pole the spring sits on. I also lubed the leaf, in the places indicated in blue. Those were the 3 places I figured would make contact with the stem legs or spring:
The stem faces, rails, and housing rail sliders were all lubed as well. After putting it back together, it was barely, bAArely quieter than the other two switches (which I had lubed normally; stems, rails and springs). Here they are, with the extra lubed switch on the left:
The difference is basically inaudible, but I could feel a little less crunch with my finger on the extra-lubed one. I took one of the other switches apart and started lubing one part at a time and putting it back together to see what made the difference, and what I found is that lubing the springs helped some, but not completely, and lubing the leaf plates helped a little more, but not completely.
In the end, all three switches that had been lubed in various ways with 205g0 sounded virtually identical to each other, but they were noticeably quieter and smoother than a stock alpaca with its factory lube. Here is a quick sound test of those, with the stock switch on the right:
Honestly, I was able to tell a minuscule difference when I lubed the leaf face, but I think the only way to make these truly noiseless would be to try swapping for some different springs. I'm not going to go that far with this build, and I still think these will be amazing when I finish soldering them to a PCB and just start using them. If you made it this far in my rambling, thank you for reading, and I hope you learned something useful or interesting from my testing. No major revelations or solutions, but sometimes a null result is what you have to accept from experimentation!
