Hello everyone! This is my second post on GH. I've become interested in mechanical keyboards by way of a search for vintage peripherals for my modern PC setup. Because I do MIS for a local art college, I run a 2009 MacPro (yes, unlike most people, I see a Macintosh as a PC as in Personal Computer because it isn't a mainframe)as my main box and touch many hosts via vsphere, ssh and vnc. When my Logitech MX 5000 BT keyboard started dying, I remembered that the Apple Extended keyboards used to be pretty awesome so I picked up an AEK II M3501 and the griffin imate. Of course, the AEK II was pretty severely yellowed on the top case and spacebar, so I started looking around for ways to remediate the yellowing to the original color. I found deskthority and GH to be very useful resources and accomplished the goal of de-yellowing my Nimitz with hair peroxide! All along the way, I've discovered more about different switch designs. I'm not unhappy with the Mitsumi switches, and have got my hands on a demo set of Cherry MX switches for comparison. I found myself wanting more.
Lurking around the GH board, I've found a wealth of info regarding retail mechs, custom builds, group buys and the awesomeness of hall effect sensors(I thought they were only made for pots but I'm glad I was wrong!) Early on, I decided that some retail boards can be pricier than practical (like the Topre), so I decided that I'd like to explore designing/building a custom board (tactile, audible switches, beige case, beige cylindrical keys, Univers57 font, Mac modifiers, but I also dig 7bit's R4 SPH GB, too bad I didn't discover this 2 years ago!). However, pricing out switches proves to be way expensive! I found that Digi-Key has better prices by far than eBay, but does anybody know of any other suppliers that have more competitive prices on Cherry MX Blues?
