Ok good, didn't want ya to end up with SKCM Black by mistake. I think I may have started a scramble lol. People forgot all about these boards with their rare switches and awesome Alps black DS caps. All I know is that I made that sellers day! Can't wait to hear your opinions on SKCM Cream. IMHO its a great switch.
I'm not sure why but I really enjoy the NeXT itself. Think you will too. Its such a nice thing, idk how to describe it. Maybe its finally getting away from all the beige lol. The logo is amazing. The green accents also make it unique Will you be converting it or just having it for the switches? Either way it makes a great display piece like you did w/ the Docutech's.
I'd say Alps doubleshots and Alps dyesubs of the same profile are equals. Beyond that, it's a matter of preference. I prefer ABS for linear switches and PBT for everything else. SGI, Wang, AT101, Heath Zenith, IBM 5140, Xerox 6085 and Docutech--all of these have PBT caps from Alps Electric and they're all the same in terms of build quality and thickness. Differences being the homing area and legends and such.
Being that NeXT boards have Alps doubleshots, I'm sure they're nice. They are one of the few Alps boards I can think of with WoBish doubleshots. I've got a set of IBM Multistation spherical caps coming my way from a friend. I would love to see how the spherical dyesubs on the C.Itoh LK201 clone board are.
If the NeXT is in great condition, I'll have to consider whether or not I'd want to use it for its switches. I'll have to figure out if it beats out SKCM Brown in terms of my favorite tactile that isn't Neon Green, haha. Yeah, my 1997 model Docutech and its mouse are always on display. With that pin, it's just the nicest vintage to display, I think, plus with it's unique short left shift US layout. It's fun.
I wouldn't have really minded a NeXT with pine SKCM Blacks as those seem quite nice, but of course I wouldn't want to pay $53 for that. I'd settle on the $25er version for pine Blacks, haha. I've noticed these ever since you brought up SKCM Cream waaay back and I looked into it, but I was never so interested since the NeXT boards were always just sitting on eBay. Didn't care much, but after amassing a bit of a collection and with your hype, I guess now is the time.
I don't know if you realized up there, but that NCR keyboard is usually used with Cherry switches and caps.
I don't know if anyone else built something Alps-based with their Leeku 3000 PCBs back when they had Alps compatibility. I'm not even sure how many of those sold, but since, like the Duck Eagle and Lightpad and Infinity v2 PCB, it can use MX and Alps, that means it was also suitable for backlighting. Right now I've technically got four key-things suitable for backlighting, but only two actively using it.
My Lightpad, the Eagles, and the NCR build, with only the first Eagle actively using linears as well as the NCR using the brown Alps linears. The others are hotswapped so I could make them all 100% backlit, but I didn't want ALL linear builds. I used to have backlit brown linear mods on my 2nd Eagle, but I decided to go all SKCM Brown at the moment. Still need a case for that one though.